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http://mmqb.si.com/2015/02/02/super-bowl-49-patriots-defeat-seahawks/
Donald Miralle/Sports Illustrated/The MMQB
The Super Bowl That Took Everyone’s Breath Away
What just happened? New England beat Seattle in Arizona, but the explanation for how it went down is hard to believe. A breakdown of the late interception, plus more on Brady and Belichick’s fourth NFL title and the 2015 Hall of Fame class
By Peter King
(These are excerpts only. To read the entire article click the link.)
****************************************************
I ran into Steve Young on the field 90 minutes after the game, and he felt the way I did, and the way I suppose much of America still feels this morning. “It’s hard to accept, because you’re so sure the game was going one way,” Young said. “I still can’t believe it.”
-------------
On Saturday night, at the Patriots’ hotel, the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa (sounds more exotic than it is), the coaches had a one-hour staff meeting. What happened there is the essence of what Bill Belichick is as a coach.
As Belichick spoke, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels took his blue Sharpie and wrote two things on the top of his laminated play-call sheet he’d carry with him on the sideline in Super Bowl XLIX. Whenever McDaniels looked down at the sheet, he’d see these two bold reminders:
ADJUST
CORRECT PROBLEMS AND GET THEM FIXED
----------
That was the dumbest big play-call in Super Bowl history.
Maybe Wilson shouldn’t have thrown it. Maybe he should have thrown it out of the end zone. But I’m not blaming Wilson for the play. It wasn’t an audible. The play came from the sidelines, from offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell. Though coach Pete Carroll took the blame afterward, it’s not his call, and it sounded very much like Carroll falling on his sword for a coach on his staff. Whatever, this was a play you simply do not call. Marshawn Lynch had 102 yards against a heavy New England defensive front in the game to that point. He’d just burrowed four yards over the left side, to the one.
When Lynch got up, the stadium clock read 1:00. And counting. Call a timeout, Belichick! Call a timeout!A stadium dumbfounded. What we knew just then:
One Patriot told me a couple of things that made sense. He thought Belichick bypassed the the timeout because the coach was comfortable defensively—as comfortable as he could be with who was on the field trying to stop Lynch—and that a timeout would have given Seattle a chance to stop and consider different plays, and why give the enemy more time to think?
In the end, Seattle could have had either two or three shots with Lynch. Instead, Wilson passed.
“What were they thinking!’’ Browner said. “I just really feel like sometimes these coaches are so intelligent they out-strategize themselves. It’s simple. You turn around and give it to the best back in the game. He picked up like four yards and landed a yard away from the end zone the play before.’’
Carroll’s explanation:
“We sent in our personnel. They sent in goal-line [defense]. 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, [Butler] 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.
“A very, very hard lesson. I hate to learn the hard way.”
But what’s the lesson? Carroll sounded like he had no regrets. So Seattle, after shredding some other defense and going 79 yards in a minute, with three downs to get one yard, given another chance, would throw a goal-line slant? I don’t get it. I never will.
Goat of the Week
Darrell Bevell, offensive coordinator, Seattle. For years to come, fans of the Seahawks and just plain fans will ask one simple question about Super Bowl 49: What in the world was Seattle doing throwing a slant pass on second and goal from the 1, with one of the game’s best short yardage backs in the backfield? It’s a question that will torment the Pacific Northwest for years and will make it difficult for Bevell ever to fulfill his dreams of becoming an NFL head coach. It simply was an incredibly wrong call.
-----------
Jerome Bettis was emotional Saturday after learning of his election into the Hall of Fame on his fifth year of eligibility. (Jordan Strauss/AP)
On the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2015
I had a strange moment Saturday in an upstairs ballroom at the Phoenix Convention Center, site of the voting for the 53rd class of the Hall of Fame. It came during the cutdown vote from 10 finalists to five, a secret ballot. (The 46 voters listen to debates for the 15 modern-era finalists, and vote for 10. That vote is tabulated, the 10 leading vote-getters are announced in the room, and then we have to winnow that list of 10 to five.) The list of 10: Jerome Bettis, Tim Brown, Tony Dungy, Kevin Greene, Charles Haley, Marvin Harrison, Orlando Pace, Junior Seau, Will Shields, Kurt Warner.
I marked an X next to Bettis, Haley, Seau and Shields. Now I was stuck. Dungy and Pace were worthy, in my mind. But as I winnowed, I found myself in a three-way mental tie for the fifth X: Brown, Greene and Harrison. Greene’s the fourth-leading sacker in the NFL dating back to 1960, with smart stats unearthed by relentless football-lover John Turney. Only Bruce Smith, Reggie White and Deacon Jones have more than Greene’s 160, and he twice led the NFL in sacks after the age of 32. A tremendously underappreciated player. I entered the day solidly in Greene’s corner, and nothing changed.
Now the receivers … I liked Brown, a lot. My eyes told me Harrison was a slightly better receiver, more elusive, a precise route-runner who made beautiful music with Peyton Manning for so long. Slightly better. But Brown had a cast of mostly also-rans throwing to him in his career, caught just eight fewer balls than Harrison and had one big edge over most great receivers: his return ability. Brown had 4,555 return yards; Harrison didn’t return kicks or punts (he had just 21), so I factored that in too.
Behind me stood the auditor from Deloitte and Touche. (Official accountants of the Pro Football Hall of Fame!) I knew he was there, waiting. I think I was the last of the 46 voters to still have my white-paper ballot.
I really wanted Greene in. I absolutely thought Brown was deserving. I marked the X next to Harrison. I just thought he was a better receiver by the eye test. But not by much. I folded the ballot, handed it to the auditor and sat back in my chair. Felt like I’d just run three miles.
Hunter Seau was in Phoenix on Saturday after his late father Junior Seau was elected, three years after committing suicide. (Jordan Strauss/AP)
Saturday, to me, was a rewarding but complex day voting for the new Hall of Famers. Rewarding because we put in long-overdue people (particularly Minnesota center Mick Tingelhoff, who has been eligible for 31 years) and because we were able to put in Ron Wolf and Bill Polian, the second and third franchise architects ever. (Jim Finks had been the only pure GM elected in Hall history.) Complex because I thought going into the room at 7 a.m. Saturday that Junior Seau was first among the 15 modern-era candidates, and most everyone else was close for second place. And that’s the way it played out over 8 hours and 50 minutes, until the yes-no votes for the five finalists—Bettis, Brown, Haley, Seau, Shields—were handed into the auditor just before 4 p.m. local time.
Some of my takeaways from the vote:
• Clarifications you should all know. We can elect a maximum of five of the 15 modern-era guys … The “Contributors” category is new this year, an attempt by the Hall to clear the logjam of franchise architects who could never get discussed as finalists because voters almost invariably favor players over scouts and GMs … Contributors and the Senior candidate, Tingelhoff, are discussed first, then voted on yes or no by secret ballot …
We know the results of the cutdown from 15 to 10, and then 10 to five, but we do not know the results of the final count until told Saturday night by the Hall of Fame—or until it leaks from excited awardees … Finally: I would have voted yes on 12 of the 15 modern-era candidates had they made it to the final five. Many in the room feel the same way. So it’s not that “we don’t think player X is a Hall of Famer.” It’s that we can only put in five per season, plus the three Seniors and Contributors.
• On Ron Wolf. Readers of this column know I think Wolf is one of the best general managers of all time, so I was glad to see him skate through. Wolf was Al Davis’s chief scout with the Raiders for years, then the GM of the expansion Bucs, and later ran the Packers for nine years. I’ve harped on the major themes of his success in Green Bay, about hiring Mike Holmgren, trading for a third-string Atlanta quarterback named Brett Favre, and convincing the best free agent of all time, Reggie White, to sign with a team a year earlier that he said was the only team in the NFL he wouldn’t sign with. But how about running nine drafts, and picking nine players in the fifth round or later who would go on to make at least one Pro Bowl?
Who does that? You can look them up: Mark Chmura, Mark Brunell, Dorsey Levens, Adam Timmerman, Matt Hasselbeck, Donald Driver, Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila, Travis Jervey (special-teamer) and Marco Rivera. “Hopefully,” Wolf told me Saturday night, “guys who build teams will start getting the respect they deserve and have deserved for a long time.” As for himself, Wolf said: “To be enshrined with the greats of the game, to be in the same hallowed room with the greatest men in the history of the game, the men who made this the greatest game in the world … honestly it leaves me speechless.”
• On the rest of the class. This was a cleanup year to me, with four new members (Charles Haley, Tim Brown, Jerome Bettis, Will Shields) who’d waited a combined 26 years for entry … Marvin Harrison is upset about missing for the second straight year, and I get it. It’s not going to get easier, either, with Terrell Owens, Hines Ward and Randy Moss joining Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt on the waiting list in the coming years … Longest debate in the voting room: Bill Polian, 51 minutes. Shortest: Junior Seau, seven minutes … The candidacy I felt has the best momentum entering next year: Kevin Greene. He’s going to make the Hall one day.
* * *
As for future Hall of Fame classes …
Brett Favre will be eligible for the Hall of Fame next year. (Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)
The leading candidates to be finalists for future Hall of Fame classes:
2016: Brett Favre, Terrell Owens, Alan Faneca, Darren Sharper.
Pretty thin at the top, but two premier guys.
2017: LaDainian Tomlinson, Brian Dawkins, Donovan McNabb, Jason Taylor, Hines Ward, Matt Light, Derrick Mason, Joey Porter.
Wouldn’t be surprised to see Dawkins break the safety schneid here. If John Lynch is still out there, Lynch-Dawkins will be an interesting debate.
2018: Ray Lewis, Randy Moss, Ronde Barber, Steve Hutchinson, Brian Urlacher, Donald Driver, Jeff Saturday.
This is the kind of year when all five modern-era candidates could come from first-year eligibles. A potentially historic class.
2019: Tony Gonzalez, Ed Reed, Champ Bailey.
Again, three very strong first-time eligible candidates.
Number of enshrinees in the past nine Hall of Fame classes, including the 2015 class elected Saturday: 60.
Number of quarterbacks enshrined in the past nine Hall of Fame classes: zero.
Donald Miralle/Sports Illustrated/The MMQB
The Super Bowl That Took Everyone’s Breath Away
What just happened? New England beat Seattle in Arizona, but the explanation for how it went down is hard to believe. A breakdown of the late interception, plus more on Brady and Belichick’s fourth NFL title and the 2015 Hall of Fame class
By Peter King
(These are excerpts only. To read the entire article click the link.)
****************************************************
I ran into Steve Young on the field 90 minutes after the game, and he felt the way I did, and the way I suppose much of America still feels this morning. “It’s hard to accept, because you’re so sure the game was going one way,” Young said. “I still can’t believe it.”
-------------
On Saturday night, at the Patriots’ hotel, the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa (sounds more exotic than it is), the coaches had a one-hour staff meeting. What happened there is the essence of what Bill Belichick is as a coach.
As Belichick spoke, offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels took his blue Sharpie and wrote two things on the top of his laminated play-call sheet he’d carry with him on the sideline in Super Bowl XLIX. Whenever McDaniels looked down at the sheet, he’d see these two bold reminders:
ADJUST
CORRECT PROBLEMS AND GET THEM FIXED
----------
That was the dumbest big play-call in Super Bowl history.
Maybe Wilson shouldn’t have thrown it. Maybe he should have thrown it out of the end zone. But I’m not blaming Wilson for the play. It wasn’t an audible. The play came from the sidelines, from offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell. Though coach Pete Carroll took the blame afterward, it’s not his call, and it sounded very much like Carroll falling on his sword for a coach on his staff. Whatever, this was a play you simply do not call. Marshawn Lynch had 102 yards against a heavy New England defensive front in the game to that point. He’d just burrowed four yards over the left side, to the one.
When Lynch got up, the stadium clock read 1:00. And counting. Call a timeout, Belichick! Call a timeout!A stadium dumbfounded. What we knew just then:
- New England led 28-24.
- Seattle needed a touchdown, obviously.
- Seattle had traveled 79 yards in 62 seconds.
- Seattle had one yard and three plays and one timeout left.
- Seattle had Marshawn Lynch. “The baddest back on the planet!” former Seahawk cornerback Brandon Browner, now a Patriot, said afterward.
One Patriot told me a couple of things that made sense. He thought Belichick bypassed the the timeout because the coach was comfortable defensively—as comfortable as he could be with who was on the field trying to stop Lynch—and that a timeout would have given Seattle a chance to stop and consider different plays, and why give the enemy more time to think?
In the end, Seattle could have had either two or three shots with Lynch. Instead, Wilson passed.
“What were they thinking!’’ Browner said. “I just really feel like sometimes these coaches are so intelligent they out-strategize themselves. It’s simple. You turn around and give it to the best back in the game. He picked up like four yards and landed a yard away from the end zone the play before.’’
Carroll’s explanation:
“We sent in our personnel. They sent in goal-line [defense]. 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, [Butler] 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.
“A very, very hard lesson. I hate to learn the hard way.”
But what’s the lesson? Carroll sounded like he had no regrets. So Seattle, after shredding some other defense and going 79 yards in a minute, with three downs to get one yard, given another chance, would throw a goal-line slant? I don’t get it. I never will.
Goat of the Week
Darrell Bevell, offensive coordinator, Seattle. For years to come, fans of the Seahawks and just plain fans will ask one simple question about Super Bowl 49: What in the world was Seattle doing throwing a slant pass on second and goal from the 1, with one of the game’s best short yardage backs in the backfield? It’s a question that will torment the Pacific Northwest for years and will make it difficult for Bevell ever to fulfill his dreams of becoming an NFL head coach. It simply was an incredibly wrong call.
-----------
Jerome Bettis was emotional Saturday after learning of his election into the Hall of Fame on his fifth year of eligibility. (Jordan Strauss/AP)
On the Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2015
I had a strange moment Saturday in an upstairs ballroom at the Phoenix Convention Center, site of the voting for the 53rd class of the Hall of Fame. It came during the cutdown vote from 10 finalists to five, a secret ballot. (The 46 voters listen to debates for the 15 modern-era finalists, and vote for 10. That vote is tabulated, the 10 leading vote-getters are announced in the room, and then we have to winnow that list of 10 to five.) The list of 10: Jerome Bettis, Tim Brown, Tony Dungy, Kevin Greene, Charles Haley, Marvin Harrison, Orlando Pace, Junior Seau, Will Shields, Kurt Warner.
I marked an X next to Bettis, Haley, Seau and Shields. Now I was stuck. Dungy and Pace were worthy, in my mind. But as I winnowed, I found myself in a three-way mental tie for the fifth X: Brown, Greene and Harrison. Greene’s the fourth-leading sacker in the NFL dating back to 1960, with smart stats unearthed by relentless football-lover John Turney. Only Bruce Smith, Reggie White and Deacon Jones have more than Greene’s 160, and he twice led the NFL in sacks after the age of 32. A tremendously underappreciated player. I entered the day solidly in Greene’s corner, and nothing changed.
Now the receivers … I liked Brown, a lot. My eyes told me Harrison was a slightly better receiver, more elusive, a precise route-runner who made beautiful music with Peyton Manning for so long. Slightly better. But Brown had a cast of mostly also-rans throwing to him in his career, caught just eight fewer balls than Harrison and had one big edge over most great receivers: his return ability. Brown had 4,555 return yards; Harrison didn’t return kicks or punts (he had just 21), so I factored that in too.
Behind me stood the auditor from Deloitte and Touche. (Official accountants of the Pro Football Hall of Fame!) I knew he was there, waiting. I think I was the last of the 46 voters to still have my white-paper ballot.
I really wanted Greene in. I absolutely thought Brown was deserving. I marked the X next to Harrison. I just thought he was a better receiver by the eye test. But not by much. I folded the ballot, handed it to the auditor and sat back in my chair. Felt like I’d just run three miles.
Hunter Seau was in Phoenix on Saturday after his late father Junior Seau was elected, three years after committing suicide. (Jordan Strauss/AP)
Saturday, to me, was a rewarding but complex day voting for the new Hall of Famers. Rewarding because we put in long-overdue people (particularly Minnesota center Mick Tingelhoff, who has been eligible for 31 years) and because we were able to put in Ron Wolf and Bill Polian, the second and third franchise architects ever. (Jim Finks had been the only pure GM elected in Hall history.) Complex because I thought going into the room at 7 a.m. Saturday that Junior Seau was first among the 15 modern-era candidates, and most everyone else was close for second place. And that’s the way it played out over 8 hours and 50 minutes, until the yes-no votes for the five finalists—Bettis, Brown, Haley, Seau, Shields—were handed into the auditor just before 4 p.m. local time.
Some of my takeaways from the vote:
• Clarifications you should all know. We can elect a maximum of five of the 15 modern-era guys … The “Contributors” category is new this year, an attempt by the Hall to clear the logjam of franchise architects who could never get discussed as finalists because voters almost invariably favor players over scouts and GMs … Contributors and the Senior candidate, Tingelhoff, are discussed first, then voted on yes or no by secret ballot …
We know the results of the cutdown from 15 to 10, and then 10 to five, but we do not know the results of the final count until told Saturday night by the Hall of Fame—or until it leaks from excited awardees … Finally: I would have voted yes on 12 of the 15 modern-era candidates had they made it to the final five. Many in the room feel the same way. So it’s not that “we don’t think player X is a Hall of Famer.” It’s that we can only put in five per season, plus the three Seniors and Contributors.
• On Ron Wolf. Readers of this column know I think Wolf is one of the best general managers of all time, so I was glad to see him skate through. Wolf was Al Davis’s chief scout with the Raiders for years, then the GM of the expansion Bucs, and later ran the Packers for nine years. I’ve harped on the major themes of his success in Green Bay, about hiring Mike Holmgren, trading for a third-string Atlanta quarterback named Brett Favre, and convincing the best free agent of all time, Reggie White, to sign with a team a year earlier that he said was the only team in the NFL he wouldn’t sign with. But how about running nine drafts, and picking nine players in the fifth round or later who would go on to make at least one Pro Bowl?
Who does that? You can look them up: Mark Chmura, Mark Brunell, Dorsey Levens, Adam Timmerman, Matt Hasselbeck, Donald Driver, Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila, Travis Jervey (special-teamer) and Marco Rivera. “Hopefully,” Wolf told me Saturday night, “guys who build teams will start getting the respect they deserve and have deserved for a long time.” As for himself, Wolf said: “To be enshrined with the greats of the game, to be in the same hallowed room with the greatest men in the history of the game, the men who made this the greatest game in the world … honestly it leaves me speechless.”
• On the rest of the class. This was a cleanup year to me, with four new members (Charles Haley, Tim Brown, Jerome Bettis, Will Shields) who’d waited a combined 26 years for entry … Marvin Harrison is upset about missing for the second straight year, and I get it. It’s not going to get easier, either, with Terrell Owens, Hines Ward and Randy Moss joining Isaac Bruce and Torry Holt on the waiting list in the coming years … Longest debate in the voting room: Bill Polian, 51 minutes. Shortest: Junior Seau, seven minutes … The candidacy I felt has the best momentum entering next year: Kevin Greene. He’s going to make the Hall one day.
* * *
As for future Hall of Fame classes …
Brett Favre will be eligible for the Hall of Fame next year. (Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images)
The leading candidates to be finalists for future Hall of Fame classes:
2016: Brett Favre, Terrell Owens, Alan Faneca, Darren Sharper.
Pretty thin at the top, but two premier guys.
2017: LaDainian Tomlinson, Brian Dawkins, Donovan McNabb, Jason Taylor, Hines Ward, Matt Light, Derrick Mason, Joey Porter.
Wouldn’t be surprised to see Dawkins break the safety schneid here. If John Lynch is still out there, Lynch-Dawkins will be an interesting debate.
2018: Ray Lewis, Randy Moss, Ronde Barber, Steve Hutchinson, Brian Urlacher, Donald Driver, Jeff Saturday.
This is the kind of year when all five modern-era candidates could come from first-year eligibles. A potentially historic class.
2019: Tony Gonzalez, Ed Reed, Champ Bailey.
Again, three very strong first-time eligible candidates.
Number of enshrinees in the past nine Hall of Fame classes, including the 2015 class elected Saturday: 60.
Number of quarterbacks enshrined in the past nine Hall of Fame classes: zero.
