For those of you who wisely went with the Puppy Bowl, let us recap the craziness that was the final play of the Seahawks' final drive.
Coach Pete Carroll admittedly overthought Seattle's last chance on offense, opting for a pass rather than a Marshawn Lynch run, and it got picked by Patriots undrafted rookie cornerback Malcolm Butler. It would've been genius if it worked. But it didn't. So by definition it's not genius.
Here it is for any Seahawks fans who aren't yet completely disgusted:
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That play right there is the type of emotional roller coaster that can cause heart attacks to spike on opposite coasts. The ultimate high for Seattle (a Jermaine Kearse catch off a Butler tip, earlier in the drive) turned into the biggest bummer the town has seen since Ken Griffey Jr. was sent to Cincinnati.
Here's the range of emotions in the stadium, first from Richard Sherman:
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...to Tom Brady:
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...to this Patriots kneel down, which preceded a fight:
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Afterward Coach Carroll owned the call, but we still expect a shit-ton of inevitable Monday morning quarterbacking tomorrow:
In fact, it started tonight. That's what Twitter does, bring a hot take to the public sphere. When you're an NFL Hall of Famer, with more carries in the league than any man who's ever lived, your tweet carries more wait than your garden variety death-threating loner. Let that be a segue to Emmitt Smith's take on Seattle's final call:
In fairness to Carroll, you don't really anticipate an interception on that play. If it's incomplete, it's third down, and you got a timeout (i.e. potentially two more plays) to activate Beast Mode.
Afterward, Pete explained himself further, stating:
“I told those guys that’s my fault totally. [Because] everybody was just like, ‘why don’t you just run it’? That’s a real good thought. But we had plenty of time to win the game and in our minds we thought we would have done it on third and fourth down. That’s how — we were playing for third and fourth down. Give them no time left and it would have been just right, but it didn’t work out that way.”
Still, odds are your Twitter timeline is less than understanding.
[via Vine]
Update:
Here's a video of Pete Caroll explaining the final play. I should probably embed it at the top, but I was like fuck it, I already typed all this. In it he expounds upon the above quotes. Honestly, to me his explanation makes sense. But then again, who the hell am I? Some nobody.
So with that in mind, let us know if you agree or disagree with Pete's explanation. That is, if you feel like typing it out in the 'comments section'.
Update #2:
In addition to Emmitt Smith, here's how a bunch of NFLers, both current and former, reacted to the Seahawks' controversial call:
Finally, we give you Marshawn Lynch's take:
[via Twitter]
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