POLL: Did the Seahawks make a mistake calling timeout?

Was it the right time to call a timeout?

In the aftermath of the Seattle Seahawks’ 33-31 loss to the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday at CenturyLink Field, I saw a lot of furor on social media about the Seahawks’ decision to use their final timeout after stopping the Rams on third down with 1 minute, 39 seconds remaining in the game.

Here’s the sequence of events:

• On third-and-1 from the Los Angeles 42, the Seahawks appeared to stop Rams running back Todd Gurley short of the first down.
• Seattle coach Pete Carroll immediately sprinted onto the field to call his final timeout.
• The officials stopped the clock on their own to measure whether Gurley made the first down.
• The measurement came up about six inches short.
• The Rams sent punter Johnny Hekker onto the field.
• The officials announced the Seattle timeout.
• During the timeout Rams coach Sean McVay changed his mind and decided to send his offense onto the field instead of the punt team.
• On fourth-and-1 Rams quarterback Jared Goff kept the ball on a quarterback sneak and picked up the first down, effectively ending the game.

What I’ve seen since is a lot of argument that it was a mistake for Carroll to call timeout in that situation.

The argument for Seattle taking its final timeout is that it stopped the clock with 1:39 remaining. No matter what Los Angeles decided to do, the Rams would have allowed the play clock to run down had the Seahawks not called timeout, meaning the play wouldn’t have run until there was little more than a minute remaining. So Seattle saved 30-some seconds by calling timeout.

The argument against Seattle taking its final timeout has been that the timeout allowed the Rams to change their mind and go for it instead of punt, which in this case resulted in the Seahawks never getting the ball back. I’ve also seen some argue that had Los Angeles punted Seattle would have been better off with a minute left and one timeout remaining than 1:30 left with no timeouts remaining.

I’ve then seen counter-arguments saying there was nothing stopping Los Angeles from sending its offense back onto the field even if Seattle hadn’t used its final timeout. I’ve also seen it said that the furor is purely based on the result of the fourth-down play, and that if the Seahawks had stopped Goff no one would consider using the timeout to be a mistake.

So where do you stand on the issue? Was calling timeout in that situation a mistake? Let us know here: