The Seahawks might be celebrating a second straight Super Bowl victory right now had they handed the ball of on second-and-goal from the 1-yard line, but instead in a decision that will be debated and criticized for a long, long time, the Seahawks went with a pass that ended up being intercepted.
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll stood by the play call after the game, saying, “We sent in our personnel, they sent in goal-line, it’s not the right matchup for us to run the football, so on second down we throw the ball really to kind of waste the play. If we score, we do, if we don’t, then we’ll run it in on third and fourth down, really with no second thoughts or no hesitation in that at all. And unfortunately, with the play we tried to execute, the guy makes a great play and jumps in front of the route and makes an incredible play that nobody would ever think he could do. Unfortunately that changes the whole outcome.”
Carroll further took the blame, saying, “I made it, I made the decision. I said, ‘throw the ball.’ So we went to the play we thought would give us a chance to get in the end zone. We had great matchups in that regard with that route, the call that we made, but it didn’t work out. They made a better play than we did. That’s going to happen.”
Offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, meanwhile, owned up to the play call, saying it was one he was comfortable with, though he also did twice mention that Ricardo Lockette, the intended receiver could have “done a better job staying strong through the ball.”
Russell Wilson tried to take the blame as well, saying “I put the blame on me. I’m the one who threw it.”
Most players gave pretty diplomatic answers about the decision to not hand the ball off to Marshawn Lynch, noting, rightly so, that one play doesn’t decide a game, but a few were critical of it.
Receiver Doug Baldwin started by trying to defend the decision, saying, “I think all of us are surprise. But in that moment, with 20 seconds left on the clock, we still had a timeout. From what I understand, we felt like we should take a shot, and we still have another down. If we ran the ball and we didn’t get in, we’d have to stop the clock, and it would limit our abilities to run or pass…”
But eventually, after 25 seconds of talking, while shaking his head through most of it, he said, “I don’t know, man. I’m just trying to make up an explanation here. I really don’t know.”
“I don’t know,” linebacker Bobby Wagner said. “We’ve got Marshawn Lynch one of the best running backs in the league and everybody makes their decisions and unfortunately we didn’t give him the ball.”
Linebacker Bruce Irvin, who was part of an ugly skirmish as New England was kneeling out the clock, was also baffled by the play call, saying, “We had it. I don’t understand how you don’t give it to the best back in the league on not even the 1-yard line. We were on the half-yard line and we throw a slant. I don’t know what the offense had going on, what they saw. I just don’t understand.”
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