Dave Boling: A decade later, ‘The Call’ at Super Bowl 49 still haunts Seahawks
In the aftermath of the heartbreaking Super Bowl 49 loss, coach Pete Carroll promised that the Seahawks would not allow the defeat to define them.
But from the distance of 10 years, it has.
At least to some extent, it overshadowed so many of the successes the Seahawks enjoyed in Carroll’s tenure.
Ask a nonaffiliated football fan to associate the terms “Seahawks” and “Super Bowl,” and it’s likely they’re not remembering the Seahawks’ domination of the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 48, but are still shaking their head about the decision, with the game on the line, to pass the ball from the 1-yard line rather than handing it to power-back Marshawn Lynch.
The Patriots’ winning interception kept the Seahawks from defending their Super Bowl title. With two in hand, many think the young/talented Seahawks might have been favored to add a third the following season, creating a certifiable dynasty.
“It’s something we have to deal with, that, in the long run, will make us stronger,” Carroll said the following morning at the team hotel in suburban Phoenix.
Actually, though, it did not.
The play
Surely, an 80-yard winning drive, led by quarterback Russell Wilson in the final two minutes, would have earned a catchy nickname to immortalize the achievement.
Down 28-24, needing a touchdown to win, Wilson passed to Lynch for a 31-yard gain and followed with a 33-yard connection from Wilson to Jermaine Kearse.
Kearse’s juggling, circus catch, would join the pantheon of clutch Super Bowl plays, having taken them to the New England 5.
The winning drive was then simply a matter of punching it in – and not leaving too much time on the clock for Patriot Tom Brady to work magic of his own.
From the New England 5, Lynch slashed off left tackle. Behind a crushing lead block by fullback Will Tukuafu, Lynch got to the 1, as New England linebacker Dont’a Hightower undercut the block of tackle Russell Okung to prevent a score.
How many small things could have changed this outcome? This was one: Sustain the block, Lynch scores, and the game is nearly over.
Still, plenty of time remaining. Second-and-goal at the 1, with one Seattle timeout remaining.
Patriots coach Bill Belichick sends in his bulky linemen for goal-line defense. Carroll and coordinator Darrell Bevell see this as creating an advantage for the Hawks to pass.
With Kearse and Ricardo Lockette wide to the right, the play calls for Kearse to lead two Patriots into each other to create a cushion for Lockette on a slant-in.
But former Seahawks cornerback Brandon Browner knows what’s coming, and on the snap, jams Kearse, to give Malcolm Butler a free run to jump Lockette before the ball can get to him.
Was the interception the problem of play-call or poor execution? It was indisputably a great play by Butler, a rookie undrafted free agent from a Division II program.
It came out later that during practice the previous week, Belichick had personally set up this scenario for the Patriots defense, and specifically schooled Butler on how to aggressively defend it.
In that case, the result was a function of superior preparation.
The call
Analysts immediately labeled the decision to pass as the worst call in the history of the Super Bowl.
ESPN stats provided a detailed breakdown that is somewhat enlightening in retrospect.
Wilson’s pass from the 1 was the 109th such attempt of the season. His was the only one intercepted.
During the 2014 season, Lynch was given the ball five times from the 1-yard line and scored only once.
The Patriots had defended rushes from their 1 six times that season and allowed five touchdowns.
Based on league averages, had the Seahawks run on second down, called timeout and run again on third, it would have resulted in a touchdown 79% of the time.
Wilson already had connected on 6 of 7 passes for 132 yards and a touchdown on play-action passes, benefiting from the Patriots’ focus on stopping Lynch runs. On this play, though, they did not employ a play-fake. Why?
Coordinator Darrell Bevell admitted that he was responsible for the play call, while Carroll publicly shouldered the blame. Bevell mentioned that he would have liked to have seen Lockette make a stronger move to the pass than he did.
Carroll tried to explain the decision based on the down/distance calculus, particularly in regard to the time on the clock and the Patriots’ beefed-up manpower. They could try the pass and still have time to run on third or fourth down, if necessary.
But in the process of explaining, he revealed a deeply held coaching strategy that always guided him. He never called a play based on the potential damage of failure.
Maybe he should. In this case, the worst possible outcome at the 1-yard-line would be exactly what happened.
The fallout
Forgotten in the postgame chaos: So many of the Seahawks had played with remarkable effort, especially on defense, that deserved recognition.
Three of their secondary stars, Richard Sherman (elbow), Earl Thomas (shoulder) and Kam Chancellor (knee) were playing with injuries that would require surgeries after the season. Carroll called their dedication “heroic” and “super-human.”
The Legion of Boom secondary is well-regarded, but a win in this one, overcoming serious injuries to all of them, would have taken the legacy to another level.
But they all were left to helplessly watch from the sidelines.
Defensive linemen Michael Bennett and Cliff Avril were exceptional, pressuring a couple of interceptions out of Brady, who struggled to find his rhythm until Avril went out of the game in the third period with a concussion.
So, did the loss make the Seahawks stronger, as Carroll predicted? Hard to see how.
So many of the stars were in their mid-20s and in their primes, but they managed no more than 10 wins in any of the next four seasons.
In the 10 succeeding seasons, the Hawks have won just two NFC West titles and made the playoffs six times.
They won three postseason games in 10 years, getting one victory since 2016, and that was a wild-card win over the Eagles in 2019.
The undoing
In an interview with Shannon Sharpe, Lynch said that he came off the field after that ill-fated pass and laughed in Carroll’s face before heading straight to the locker room before the game finished. Not sure whether there’s video evidence of that, but if he did, it would symbolize the start of a great unraveling.
Starting in 2010, Carroll collected a roster of promising talents with axes to grind, whose play was amplified by having been underestimated. Wilson was too short; Chancellor too big; Sherman too slow; Lynch too much to handle.
Carroll sold them on the idea that everyone else was wrong about them, and that with the Hawks, all that vengeful motivation could be channeled toward the opponents.
He was an astonishingly effective promoter of his beliefs. He could have been a world-class salesman, or a televangelist.
He had all that optimism and that forever-young attitude. Some saw him as football’s Peter Pan.
And the buy-in was complete – on the way up.
Time and again they had scored dramatic wins, seemingly accomplishing the impossible. Two weeks earlier, for example, they’d rallied back against the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship game.
But the failure in the Super Bowl was compounded by the way it defied their character.
If they had handed the ball to Lynch three times from the 1 and never got in, well, that was how they were built. Nobody could argue with giving the ball to your best player in the biggest moment.
They could live with that.
The interception, though, caused so many to question their core Seahawks beliefs.
As J.M. Barrie wrote of the literary Peter Pan: “The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.”
And that, 10 years later, seems as good of an analogy of what happened to Carroll and the Seahawks after Super Bowl 49.
One play caused them to forever doubt.