Some have already been deemed it the worst call in Super Bowl history. Trailing by four on second-and-goal with 26 seconds left in the game, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson targeted receiver Ricardo Lockette up the middle, instead of handing off to Marshawn Lynch.
Malcolm Butler intercepted it. Patriots won, 28-24.
Why did Wilson throw instead of letting Seattle’s speedy and powerful back run it in? It’s the question everyone wanted answered after the game, and head coach Pete Carroll attempted to do so. Multiple times.
Only even he failed to find logic in the baffling play. The more he tried to explain, the less sense he made. We parsed his post-game quotes — as many as we could find — hoping there was a reasonable explanation buried in his comments. No such luck:“Let me just tell you what happened because as you know, the game comes right down and all the things that happened before are meaningless to you now. It’s really what happened on this one sequence that we would have won the game, we have everything in mind, how we’re going to do it, we’re going to leave them no time, and we had our plays to do it. 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 that 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 that 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. And unfortunately that changes the whole outcome.”
“Really the way the route generally works is the back receiver gets shielded off so that the play can get thrown to the guy trailing. And it’s worked really well, it’s been a really nice concept but they jumped it, did a fantastic job. I don’t know if they prepared to do that or he did it on his own, but it was a great play.”
“We were going to run the ball in to win the game but not on that down. That was it.”
“I’ll tell you again if you want to hear again. Here’s the deal: We sent our guys on the field, wide receivers on the field, spread them out, they ran on their goal line, they sent all their big guys out there. At that moment I didn’t want to waste a run play against their goal line guys. Throw the ball, we’ll come in on third and fourth down, and we can match up. It’s a really clear thought, it wasn’t something that happened, it was a clear thought but it didn’t work out right. We happened to throw them the ball, and they make a big play.”
“In that situation, it was not told to (Russell Wilson). I don’t remember hearing that said to him. But we’re so in-sync, and we understand what’s going on. That’s a play that’s supposed to work versus the two guys covering one-on-one, and the guy jumped underneath and made the play.”
“It’s just because of the matchups. At this time it seems like over thinking, but they have goal line guys on, we have three wide receivers, a tight end and one back, in that situation, they’ve got extra guys at the line of scrimmage. So we don’t want to waste a run play (with Marshawn Lynch) at that.”
“I just told them ‘Make sure, let’s throw it here.’ We’ll run on third and fourth down.”
“I understand, I know you have a million questions about this, and I’ll answer them. It’s really OK. I understand why you’re asking, so I’ll try to answer them the best I can for you.”
“You’re a classic example of what I understand. That’s not what’s going on right now. We decided to call another call. We make these decisions every game all the time. They work out sometimes and they don’t other times. This one didn’t work out right for us. We could have run it and got stuffed, we could run it and scored, we could have scored against their goal line as well. I know that could’ve happened. It just wasn’t a great football thought at the time. Great football is let’s make sure we match up properly so we can have our best chance to run it in and score. In retrospect, we could have easily run it, and we wouldn’t be talking about this. We might have got stuffed on third and fourth down. I don’t know. This is what happened.”
“All (Wilson) could have done is thrown the other way to the other side with the route. But he had what he was looking for, the guy makes a phenomenal play that guys aren’t supposed to make, he just jumped into the route.”
“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.”
“The consequence doesn’t match here. It is a really good play when they don’t have their guys to cover us.”
: “You could run on 2nd down, call timeout, have to throw on third and score, or incompletion and have to choose (run or pass) on the final down. That’s ball logic, not 2nd guess logic … you never think you’ll throw an interception there, just as you don’t think you would fumble.”
“Yeah, here’s the deal. We got one timeout. Somewhere in here, because we only had one timeout — we were waiting for the replay on the (Jermaine) Kearse catch. We thought maybe they would, then we lost our attempt, so we had to use our timeout there. So we only have one timeout left. So we got three plays. We got to get all three plays run. We sent three receivers on the field to go ahead and run the ball in there and (the Patriots) sent goal line people on the field, so they kind of got a better matchup than we had. So I said throw it. Throw it here. We throw a touchdown pass, we win the game. We have great matchups the other way, and if we throw a touchdown pass, nobody ever would have thought it. But the fact that we make — you know, they make a great play. We didn’t make a mistake, even. They make a great play and (Malcolm) Butler intercepts the ball.
“But the point is that, football-wise, we’re coming back, we’re going to run the ball on third and fourth down — whatever we want to do on third and fourth down to win because we’ll use our timeout. Third down, we’d run the football, and if we didn’t score, we’d use the timeout. And then we’d do whatever we needed to on fourth down, depending on where the ball was. It was really clear.
“So it’s not like we abandoned the running game or any of that kind of stuff. It’s the matchup happened, we knew that one of those plays in there we’d have to throw it because you need to stop the clock so that you can get the other two plays run. So that’s basically what happened.
“If we run it there and we don’t make it, we’d have to use the timeout. OK, then what happens on third and fourth down? See those are all the thoughts we already had. We were clear as can be about it. It’s really hard on everybody to understand that, but it had nothing to do with Marshawn, it had nothing to do with all the yards we rushed for. It was to make sure we all three plays so that we could execute at the end of the game, and not everybody gets that. So I get it.
“It’s was one-on-ones right there, two guys on two guys — it’s a play designed to beat that, and Russell saw it, it should be there and then Butler just jumped the heck out of it and takes a great risk and goes for it and makes a championship play.”
