Super Bowl XLIX and the Call Nobody Can Let Go

Second-and-goal from the 1. Under half a minute to play. One timeout left. Marshawn Lynch in the backfield. If you watched Super Bowl XLIX, you know what happened next, and you have probably argued about it in at least one bar since.

It was February 1, 2015, in Glendale, Arizona. Seattle was one yard from back-to-back titles, something nobody had done since New England a decade earlier. Russell Wilson threw a quick slant. Malcolm Butler stepped in front of it. The Patriots won 28-24. The play took about two seconds. The argument has outlived nearly every career on the field that night.

The Week Was Already Weird

New England showed up in Arizona after two weeks of Deflategate, fielding questions about football air pressure like it was a congressional hearing. Lynch turned media day into performance art, answering question after question with the same line: "I'm just here so I won't get fined." At halftime, Katy Perry's show gave the internet Left Shark. It was that kind of week before the strangest part even started.

The game itself was tight and mean. Seattle led 24-14 going into the fourth quarter. Tom Brady answered with two touchdown drives, hitting Danny Amendola and then Julian Edelman, and New England led 28-24 with about two minutes left.

Then came the catch that should have been the story. Wilson threw deep down the right sideline, Butler got a hand on it, and Jermaine Kearse juggled the ball off his own legs while flat on his back before pinning it down at the 5. It looked like fate wearing a Seahawks helmet. On the next snap, Lynch pushed it to the doorstep of the goal line. Bill Belichick, holding his timeouts, let the clock run.

Why Seattle Threw It

Here is the logic, as Pete Carroll laid it out afterward. New England had its goal-line defense on the field. Seattle had three receivers out there, not the personnel you want for a run into a loaded front. A pass on second down, if it fell incomplete, would stop the clock and save the timeout for third and fourth down. Three shots at one yard. Throw first, run later.

It worked on the whiteboard. On the grass it went like this: Kearse and Ricardo Lockette lined up stacked on the right. Brandon Browner, a former Seahawk, jammed Kearse at the line and blew up the rub. Butler, an undrafted rookie out of West Alabama, read the slant, broke on it before Lockette did and took the ball away at the goal line. He said later he had seen that look in practice that week.

Lynch never touched the ball. Carroll took the blame in public. He later described the outcome as the worst possible result of a call, which is a careful way of not calling it the worst call. That distinction has never once settled a bar argument.

Both Sides Have a Case

That is why it never dies. The defense of the call is real. Interceptions from the 1-yard line almost never happen. The clock math was legitimate. Belichick letting the clock run put Seattle in an odd spot, and Carroll was trying to squeeze three plays out of it.

The prosecution needs one sentence: you had Marshawn Lynch. He was the most punishing short-yardage runner of his era, the identity of the whole operation, a back whose most famous playoff run set off seismic monitors in Seattle. And the season went on a quick slant into traffic.

Even the clock move gets argued both ways. Belichick either saw something, gambled on something or simply waited. People read it all three ways and dig in.

What It Did to Both Teams

New England won two more Super Bowls in the next four years, including the 28-3 comeback against Atlanta. The Brady and Belichick era finished with six.

Seattle never made it back to a Super Bowl under Carroll. Lynch retired a year later, came back to play for his hometown Raiders, and has spent the years since being asked about a play he was never part of.

Then there is Butler, who ended up at the center of another call nobody could explain. In Super Bowl LII against Philadelphia, the Patriots kept him on the sideline for almost every defensive snap. The Eagles put up 41 points and won. The guy whose interception decided one Super Bowl watched another one slip away from the bench.

The Rematch Didn't Fix It

Seattle and New England met again in Super Bowl LX last February, with different coaches, different quarterbacks and almost nobody left from 2015. Seattle won. It finally got a ring against the franchise that took one away.

It did not matter. Bring up Seahawks and Patriots in any bar and nobody starts with LX. They start with second-and-goal.

One yard. One timeout. The best short-yardage back of his generation a few steps from the quarterback. Hand it off and the play disappears into a highlight package. Throw it and it becomes the most argued-over snap in football. Seattle threw it.