With a Super Bowl there for the taking, Seahawks’ Pete Carroll simply got too clever

And then Pete Carroll decided to do some play-calling.

It produced perhaps the most remarkable conclusion to any of the 49 Super Bowls, the Seattle Seahawks one yard and 26 seconds from victory on Sunday, until their coach sent in a play he likely will regret the rest of his life.

I spent more than a little time around Pete Carroll in a previous decade, when he was the coach of the University of Southern California’s Trojans.

He is one of my favourite sports figures: sunny, energetic, sincere, genuinely interested in other people. If Pete Carroll were introduced to you on Monday he would remember your name on Tuesday, and if you knew him for a month he might well inquire after the welfare of your family.

Those personality traits, which add up to that rarest of human qualities, charisma, put him in good stead for most of his career. Employers like having him around. Football players want to work for him. He has been hired three times to lead NFL teams, and won a Super Bowl, and coached USC for nine years, winning three college national titles.

He likes his teams big and fast, and he assembled the biggest and fastest team in the NFL, an overtly physical group who overpower opponents with minimum subtlety, which is how Carroll believes football should be played. (See: last year’s Super Bowl: Seattle 43, Denver 8.)

As good a coach as he is, and he is a very good coach, he has two flaws: he indulges his players, which sometimes leads to indiscipline he prefers not to recognise; and he refuses to concede he is not the cleverest man in his profession.

When the Seahawks reached the New England 1-yard line with 26 seconds to play, he should have done the obvious: give the ball to the battering ram named Marshawn Lynch to pick up those final three feet and secure a victory over the New England Patriots.

Lynch already had run for 102 yards and only two of his 24 carries had not produced at least a yard. And if Lynch did not get into the end zone on the first try, the Seahawks could use their last time-out and give him another crack as the game ended.

Instead, Carroll and his offensive coordinator, Darrell Bevell, agreed on a pass play. They over-thought a simple situation, which is what not-quite-as-clever coaches often do. Carroll has been there before, failing to get a championship-clinching first down against Texas in the 2006 Rose Bowl when LenDale White came up a yard short while USC’s best player, Reggie Bush, watched from the sideline.

Carroll’s overly ornate explanation was that he wanted to bleed the clock down to almost nothing, so the Patriots would not have time to get a field goal. A quick pass, then, and maybe a touchdown but, if not, Lynch with two cracks at banging into the end zone. That was Carroll’s bright idea.

The Seahawks looked confused before the play began, with two players shifting from one side to the other before the snap, an ominous portent. The ball was meant to be thrown by Seattle’s Russell Wilson to Riccardo Lockette, running a slant route, albeit into a crowd of players. Instead, New England cornerback Malcolm Butler, who had been watching Wilson’s eyes, jumped into the spot where the ball was supposed to meet Lockette’s hands and intercepted the pass in one of American sport’s greatest “what the ...?” moments.

Game over. Instead of Seattle winning 31-28, it ended New England 28-24.

Carroll’s fateful decision impacts the legacies of at least four prominent actors in this drama.

New England’s Bill Belichick, the dark lord of subterfuge and rules-bending, is now without argument the top coach of this century, with four Super Bowl victories. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady gets the 21st century Best Quarterback title with those four wins.

Wilson, previously charmed, threw The Interception, and Carroll is forever the man who called The Wrong Play in the 49th Super Bowl. The one he should have won.

The final indignity? The Patriots and owner Robert Kraft fired Carroll as New England coach after the 1999 season, despite two play-offs appearances in three years, and replaced him with a smarter guy: Belichick. Carroll helped prove it.

poberjuerge@thenational.ae

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