Seahawks coach who called the pass from the one-yard line explains what went wrong
The NFL world is baffled that Bevel decided to throw a slant pass instead of running the ball with Marshawn Lynch from the one-yard line on 2nd and goal with 25 seconds left.
After the game, Bevel explained what happened, and he seemed to point the finger at wide receiver Ricardo Lockette for not bumping Patriots cornerback Malcolm Butler off the ball before the interception.
When asked what he saw on the play, Bevel said (via Seattle Times):
"Yeah [Russell Wilson] made a great read. I thought he made a great read from what I was told upstairs. He put a good throw on it as well. We could have done a better job of staying strong to the ball. But the kid from New England made a great play."
What he means is Lockette and Butler arrived at the point of the catch at the same time, but Butler was more physical and came away with the ball:
It was a fantastic play by Butler, but could Lockette have been a little stronger here?
Carroll took blame after the game, but Bevel says it was his call.
"I'm calling the plays. I make the calls," he said. "Coach Carroll can tell me to do something different and we communicate, we talk, but I make all the play calls."
Here's how explained his decision-making on the final drive:
"One of the things we were making sure we were doing is using all the time. We were really conscious of how much time was on the clock and wanted to be able use it all. Wanted to use as much of it as we could. We had one timeout left. So we ran it on first down. We changed personnel quick, felt like we had enough time to do that. We were trying to get a play where it wouldn't have ended in the field of play. So we could end up using the time and have all four downs as well.
(...)
"There's 20 different things that go through my mind that you could do. You could run it. It doesn't mean that you score on that play. We were real conscious that we didn't leave much time for them as well."
With only one timeout, the Seahawks only could have run the ball one time anyway. They decided to throw it on 2nd down because it would run a few seconds off the clock while not running the risk of ending the game. Unfortunately, it went as bad as it could have gone.