The defending Champion Seattle Seahawks had a 10-point lead with 8 minutes left in regulation, and blew it. The New England Patriots took a 28-24 lead with 2:02 left. Quarterback Russell Wilson drove the Hawks to the Patriot 1-yard line with 26 seconds to go.
With the ball there, the call seemed obvious: A running play. Possibly Wilson on a quarterback sneak, like Bart Starr to win the 1967 NFL Championship Game, the Ice Bowl, for the Green Bay Packers. Or a handoff to Marshawn Lynch, the running back known as "Beast Mode," a 5-time Pro Bowler, who had already scored a touchdown in the game, and had gotten the ball 4 yards to the 1-yard line on the previous play.
Instead, Seahawk head coach Pete Carroll called for a pass, from Wilson to Ricardo Lockette. Patriot cornerback Malcolm Butler correctly figured out that Lockette was the target, and intercepted the pass. The Patriots won the game.
It's hard to imagine now, with Ohio State University having had Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks and winning National Championships with a great passing game, but there was a time, in the 1960s and '70s, when their head coach was Woody Hayes. Famous for a running game described as "Three yards and a cloud of dust," he was known for hating the forward pass enough to say, "There are three things that can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad." Meaning an incomplete pass and an interception.
Malcolm Butler clinched victory for the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX with the most famous interception in football history.
Cris Collinsworth, a 3-time Pro Bowler who had played in Super Bowls XVI and XXIII for the Cincinnati Bengals, was broadcasting the game for NBC, and spoke for so many people watching:
I'm sorry, but I can't believe the call... You've got Marshawn Lynch in the backfield. You've got a guy that has been borderline unstoppable in this part of the field. I can't believe the call...
If I lose the Super Bowl because Marshawn Lynch can’t get it in from the 1-yard line, so be it. So be it! But there is no way."
Hall of Fame cornerback Deion Sanders, analyzing the game for CBS, called it "one of the worst calls in Super Bowl history." Peter King, the main football writer for Sports Illustrated, and a winner of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Dick McCann Award for writers, writer Peter King, used the exact same words: "one of the worst calls in Super Bowl history." Hall-of-Famer Emmitt Smith, the NFL's all-time leading rusher, went even further, calling it "the worst play call in the history of football."
So that's, effectively, 3 members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, 3 guys who really know football -- one on offense, one on defense, and one watching from above -- saying it was a bad call, essentially blaming Pete Carroll for throwing away back-to-back wins in the Super Bowl, a rare achievement, and possibly Carroll's own eventual election to the Hall.
Is there any way to defend the call? Not really.
Is there any way to say that Carroll shouldn't be blamed for the loss? Yes. Can any such way be taken seriously? Read on:
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame Pete Carroll for the Seattle Seahawks Losing Super Bowl XLIX
5. Pete Carroll. He got the Seahawks into that Super Bowl. And into the one the year before, and won it. He, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer are the only head coaches to win both an NCAA National Championship and an NFL Championship (either before or during the Super Bowl era, 1967 onward).
Did he make a mistake with that play-call? Almost certainly. But he got them to within 1 play of back-to-back Super Bowl wins. Here's all the head coaches who have reached back-to-back Super Bowls: Vince Lombardi, Tom Landry, Don Shula, Bud Grant, Chuck Noll, Joe Gibbs, Dan Reeves, Marv Levy, Jimmy Johnson, Mike Holmgren, Mike Shanahan, Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll.
That's 13 guys. Of those, just 10 won at least 1 of them: Lombardi, Landry, Shula, Noll, Gibbs, Johnson, Holmgren, Shanahan, Belichick and Carroll. Both of them? 6: Lombardi, Shula, Noll, Johnson, Shanahan and Belichick.
Going back to the pre-Super Bowl era, back-to-back NFL Championship Games were also won by George Halas, Greasy Neale, Buddy Parker, Paul Brown and Weeb Ewbank. So, 11 guys since 1932. That should give you and idea of how hard it is.
(No, Bill Walsh never did it. Only once at the San Francisco 49ers made back-to-back Super Bowls in Walsh's last season as head coach and George Seifert first.)
Pete Carroll got the Seattle Seahawks to within one yard of back-to-back World Championships. They would not have gotten that far without him.
4. Russell Wilson. He threw the pass. He also could have said, "This is a bad call. I'm calling a different play in the huddle." He could have shown the leadership that a great quarterback would show. He didn't.
3. Malcolm Butler. He made the interception. Give him credit for pulling off the key play.
2. The Seahawks Offense. Their 20 1st downs wasn't that bad, compared to the Pats' 25. But they were only 3-for-10 on 3rd down, compared to the Pats' 8-for-14. They also committed more penalties, 7-5, for twice as many yards, 70-36. And had less time of possession, 26:14 to 33:46.
It took them 20 minutes and 13 seconds to get their 1st score. Their last score came with 19 minutes and 54 seconds to go. They blew a 10-point lead, and they blew it with 8 minutes to go. Blowing a 10-point lead tied what was then a Super Bowl record.
It would be eclipsed 2 years later by the Atlanta Falcons -- also against the Patriots. Hmmmm...
1. The Patriots Cheated. We don't actually know that the Patriots cheated at any point in the 2014-15 NFL season. We only know that they have been caught cheating multiple times. They have forfeited the presumption of innocence.
So we have heard the case for the prosecution, and we have heard the case for the defense. It's time to decide.
VERDICT: Guilty. Going over the Top 5 Reasons again:
5. It doesn't matter what Carroll did before, only what he did at the moment in question.
4. Wilson was following orders. If he had disobeyed that order, and run the ball, and had gotten stopped, he would have been blamed for losing the Super Bowl, in spite of the fact that he had won one just the year before. If there's one thing the powers that be in the NFL value more than money, it's control. Wilson could be headed for the Hall of Fame. Instead, he could have been run out of the game.
3. Butler wouldn't have intercepted the pass if Carroll hadn't called it.
2. The Seahawks offense put themselves in position to win the game. Granted, this would seem to contradict the rebuttal to Reason Number 5. But it does emphasize the fact that Carroll blew it.
1. If Carroll had made the right call, it wouldn't have mattered if the Patriots cheated: The Seahawks would have won anyway.
Yes, the New England Patriots have cheated their way to 6 Super Bowl wins in the 22 seasons that they have been coached by Bill Belichick. But they have also failed to win the Super Bowl 16 times, including losing the Super Bowl 3 times: XLII and XLVI to the New York Giants, and LII to the Philadelphia Eagles.
It is possible to beat the Patriots, even when they cheat. Carroll had a great chance to do so. He didn't. He is to blame for that.