Pete Carroll Claims Seahawks Botched OT Kick - Do You Buy It?
"The throw, the pass, it's a great idea to throw the ball to get their touchdown against those guys, unless it doesn't happen..."
That was Pete Carroll talking about his Super Bowl play-call that will live in infamy, the slant pass that Malcolm Butler picked off to seal the Patriots' fourth championship.
Pete's point is that sometimes you make a call that, if it works, will make you look like a genius, and if it fails, will make you look like a moron. I personally didn't mind that Pete called a pass play in the Super Bowl. But an inside slant? So many things can go wrong with that, as Butler showed the world at the end of the Super Bowl. Why didn't they do a corner fade? But I digress...
Carroll is once again under fire for his play-calling, as the Seattle Seahawks lost on the road to the St. Louis Rams in overtime Sunday to start the season 0-1. Carroll immediately put the Seahawks in trouble when he called for a surprise onside kick to start overtime. That's now two consecutive games in which Carroll made an incredibly ballsy yet colossally dumb play-call that ultimately cost the Seahawks the game.
But after the loss, Carroll put the blame on kicker Steven Hauschka for whiffing on the kick.
"We just didn't execute that. That's not what was supposed to happen. We just didn't execute properly on the kick. We were kicking the ball in a certain area of the field. We didn't hit it right, and so we just mishit it...We were kicking the ball way down the field."
Hauschka corroborated Carroll's claim: "The result wasn't planned there...I mishit that kick. We were supposed to kick it downfield further than that, but yeah I mishit it. I take the responsibility on that, putting our team in a bad situation there starting overtime...There was something we saw on them that we wanted to try to take advantage of, but obviously didn't do that."
Still, both explanations imply that they were not going for a standard kickoff down the field. It sounds like they were going for a pooch kick, which, if executed properly, would have gone high in the air and landed softly behind the Rams, giving the Seahawks a chance to recover as if it were an onside kick.
Either way, Carroll got way too cute with his play-calling and it gifted the Rams great field position. On top of that, he ostensibly didn't have his kicker ready to execute the play the way he intended.
Twitter had a field day with Carroll's blunder...
But as bad as the botched kick looked, it wasn't the last play of the game. After the Rams kicked a field goal in OT, the Seahawks had one last play to get one yard and stay alive. Carroll called the next play like he learned from his Super Bowl mistake, and gave the ball to Marshawn Lynch.
Problem is, he called a draw play that was stuffed behind the line.
Do you believe Carroll when he says the kicking blunder was simply poor execution, and not a failed onside kick? The kick doesn't look like Hauschka was trying to kick the ball down the field. It feels more like he or the special teams coach made a boneheaded play-call and he's having the kicker take the fall for it. But even eliminating conspiracy theories and it really was just poor execution, Hauschka clearly wasn't ready to make a trick play like that in that situation. At least some of the blame for that has to fall on the coaching staff.
What do you think was going through Carroll's head on that play? Did they botch a regular kick or is he lying about calling for an onside kick? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Matt Dolloff is a digital producer for CBSBostonSports.com and could listen to Pete Carroll ramble about his play-calling all season. Read more from Matt here and follow him on Twitter @mattdolloff.
