Super Bowl XLIX thread.

[Pelado]

http://mmqb.si.com/2015/02/02/super-bowl-49-darrell-bevell-play-call-interception/

“If I was an offensive guy, that’s the play I want drawn up,” said Browner.

“It’s man-to-man, you stack receivers like this,” he said, putting one fist in front of the other. “And boom!, you try to pick the guy. They had a good play, but we knew them, we watched them for two weeks.”

Butler had seen the stacked-receiver look in practice, where he’d been beaten on the play by Josh Boyce. “I didn’t let it happen again,” he said.

But it was his interception that will be remembered, which is good news for Belichick. The interception overshadowed what was actually the biggest coaching blunder of the night: Belichick’s decision to not call timeout prior to second down on the 1-yard-line. Immediately after Jermaine Kearse’s improbable—and really, flat-out lucky—33-yard catch down to the 5-yard-line, the Seahawks called timeout. They wanted to gather themselves, but that timeout actually helped New England, as it ensured well over a minute remaining for another Tom Brady drive in the event that Seattle scored on the next play.

Belichick said after the game that he would have called timeout had the interception play been a run stop. But that’s exactly what he should have done after the previous play, a Marshawn Lynch four-yard run. Instead he let 40 seconds tick off the clock. Had the Seahawks scored on the pass to Lockette, the Patriots would have had 0:26 to come back, rather than 1:06.

But unfortunately, because hindsight is everyone’s favorite perspective, it’s Bevell being cited for a coaching blunder.

[Donuthole]

Looks like the Onion and the BunYon don't have the corner on faux-news satire:

http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=30418

[grapevine]

Elder Bevel probably called that play on purpose at the goal line figuring that the Pats would do everything they could to stop Brother Lynch so he picked a play he was sure would catch them off guard.

[Moliere]

Elder Bevel probably called that play on purpose at the goal line figuring that the Pats would do everything they could to stop Brother Lynch so he picked a play he was sure would catch them off guard.

If he wanted to catch them off guard, he should have done a fake punt.

[Blueintheface]

It worked for Mexican avocados though. I thought that commercial was hilarious.

How pissed must California be though? Livid, I tell ya.

[creekster]

How pissed must California be though? Livid, I tell ya.

Not really. Does anybody care if the avocados come from Mexico or California? A rising tide lifts all boats.

[USUC]

Not really. Does anybody care if the avocados come from Mexico or California? A rising tide lifts all boats.

Freakonomics had a podcast about those blood avocados from Mexico. Completely messed up.

[Uncle Ted]

LOL... Game Theory Says Pete Carroll’s Call at Goal Line Is Defensible

Football Theory says Pete screwed up... Big time:

Pete Carroll botches the Super Bowl

Seahawks' fun-loving coach makes serious mistake by authorizing ill-fated pass
[...]
Carroll just had to make a decision any Pop Warner coach worth his whistle and drill cones would have made. Lynch was in full you-know-what mode, barreling his way through the New England Patriots and carrying the Seahawks to the league's first two-peat since Belichick and Tom Brady pulled it off in a different life. Lynch already had 102 rushing yards and a touchdown to his name, and he had just planted Seattle on the Patriots' 1-yard line.
[...]
But a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to a delirious flight back home. It rained on Seattle's parade. Instead of notarizing his standing as Belichick's equal, Peter Clay Carroll made the dumbest and most damaging call in Super Bowl history.


He asked his quarterback, Russell Wilson, to throw the ball. Wilson tried to hit Ricardo Lockette on a quick slant, and an undrafted rookie out of West Alabama named Malcolm Butler jumped the route and intercepted the ball to deliver the Seahawks the kind of crushing, endgame blow they'd delivered to the Green Bay Packers in the NFC Championship Game.
[...]
Carroll killed his own fairy tale.


"It was a really good play," he insisted of the throw that was picked off.


It was the worst Super Bowl play of all time.


Carroll once had Reggie Bush on the sideline -- instead of in his backfield -- at the end of a breathless national championship game he'd lose to Texas. Other smart guys have done some really dumbfounding things.

Gregg Popovich had Tim Duncan on the bench near the end of that disastrous Game 6 loss to Miami a couple of years ago. Grady Little left Pedro Martinez on the mound in that Game 7 in 2003 at Yankee Stadium. Rick Pitino didn't put a man on Grant Hill for that three-quarters-court pass to Christian Laettner that decided Duke-Kentucky in 1992 -- maybe the greatest college game ever played.


But this was the mother of all screwups. Pete Carroll, the successor to Dick Clark as the world's oldest teenager, got all silly and reckless at the worst possible time.


He cost his team the Super Bowl, and there was nothing even remotely fun about it.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/2014/story/_/id/12266624/ian-oconnor-seattle-seahawks-coach-pete-carroll-botches-super-bowl-xlix

[Walter Sobchak]

That's an excellent question. He was not much of a sports fan growing up (casual at best). Since moving to Seattle he has become a Seahawks fan and has been sending us hats, shirts, etc. He is having fun with it, but he is still a fairly casual fan. Part of his motivation is to piss off one of his close friends who grew up in the Bay area and is a rabid Niners fan.

He loves Seattle, by the way. He is very happy there.

Ha! Good for him! It's great to hear he is doing well and is enjoying the PNW.

[All-American]

LOL... Game Theory Says Pete Carroll’s Call at Goal Line Is Defensible

Football Theory says Pete screwed up... Big time:


http://espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/2014...uper-bowl-xlix

Bah.

Unlike the patriot's footballs, this controversy is overblown.

[SeattleUte]

lazy routes lose games

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-head-coach-botched-the-end-of-the-super-bowl-and-it-wasnt-pete-carroll/

This is an awesome article. It convinced me that the Seattle coaches are being unfairly condemned. Classic Monday morning quarterbacking!

[TripletDaddy]

At this point, if you are a journalist writing an article about why that call was a bad call, you have missed the window of opportunity. You are unoriginal and late to the party. Just be done with your article and go do an Ice Bucket Challenge, maybe put on an ugly Xmas sweater, too.

[Uncle Ted]

Time: Worst Calls in Sports History


WorstCalls.jpg

[SeattleUte]

At this point, if you are a journalist writing an article about why that call was a bad call, you have missed the window of opportunity. You are unoriginal and late to the party. Just be done with your article and go do an Ice Bucket Challenge, maybe put on an ugly Xmas sweater, too.

Sports writers and fans never hold themselves in their own lives to the same extremely high standards of excellence and perfection that they hold coaches and players.

[Uncle Ted]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...-pete-carroll/

This is an awesome article. It convinced me that the Seattle coaches are being unfairly condemned. Classic Monday morning quarterbacking!

No, Petey is being fairly condemned: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/s...-pete-carroll/

It’s possible, if not likely, that Carroll passed on second down because he didn’t want to be in a position where the Patriots knew they would pass on third down. And that reality arose because Belichick kept his timeouts holstered.


Belichick would have known that Carroll didn’t want to box himself in on a possible third down, which is how the Patriots could have anticipated that second-down pass that Malcolm Butler intercepted to ice the game. Even with the ball on the goal line, the Patriots used three cornerbacks on the field. The third? Butler.

It should be noted that the Seahawks’ suboptimal clock management contributed to their downfall. After Jermaine Kearse’s circus catch set up Seattle with a first-and-goal at the 5, the Seahawks burned their second timeout because they didn’t get a play to Wilson quickly enough. That timeout could have made Belichick not calling one moot. And as noted above, the Seahawks took too long after Lynch’s first-down run.


Anyone could still argue the Seahawks should have relied on their strength and given the ball to Lynch or let Russell Wilson run a zone-read play at the 1. Studying all of the permutations of the clock could be overthinking it. But as you rip Carroll for not running the ball at the goal line, credit Belichick for making him have to consider it, for making a tiny decision that had an enormous impact.