The breakdowns that denied Marshawn Lynch a chance to win a title from the 1 — again
Final minute. Marshawn Lynch was in the game. He was 1 yard from winning the Seahawks a championship.
Again.
Bobby Wagner is one of the five Seahawks players who has been there with Lynch before. Almost five full years ago, in Super Bowl 49, Wagner watched from the sideline as Seattle had Russell Wilson throw from the 1 against New England instead of handing the ball to Lynch. You know the rest: Wilson infamously threw the interception that denied the Seahawks a second consecutive Super Bowl title in February 2015.
When Wagner saw Lynch enter Sunday night’s NFC West title game—Lynch’s Seahawks return game—against San Francisco with 22 seconds left and the ball at the 1-yard line, the All-Pro linebacker had one thought watching again from the sideline.
A wrong is about to be righted.
“I just thought Marshawn was going to get the ball and run it in for a touchdown,” Wagner said.
“And then we got a delay of game, so...”
So long division title. So long home playoff game.
The 49ers won 26-21. That sends the Seahawks (11-5) to Philadelphia (9-7) at 1:40 p.m. Sunday for the wild-card round of the NFC playoffs.
Lynch’s first game since re-signing last week after four years away from Seattle won’t be remembered for his 34 yards on 12 carries. Nor for his first touchdown for the Seahawks since November 2015, a 1-yard jump in the fourth quarter that cut San Francisco’s lead to 19-14. Coach Pete Carroll said it was the first time he remembers Lynch leaping and scoring over the goal line.
Sunday return game for Lynch won’t be remembered for the roars he got from the CenturyLink Field crowd got each time he did anything—including wearing his usual mask and hood in his incognito pregame warmups.
It won’t be remembered for his colorful comments at his locker after his return game, though they were vintage Lynch.
“So, (shoot). ...You feel me? I ain’t did nothing. I’m fresh off the couch and hella (stuff),” Lynch said. “So, your boy just want to get some legs, man. It was a great opportunity for that, you know. A good defense. No shortage of a challenge out there. At the end of the day, you feel me?”
He said he felt “straight love, bruh. Straight up” from the roaring home crowd.
“12s (mess) with your boy tough,” Lynch said. “They made your boy feel right at home. That’s some solid (stuff).”
Sunday night will be remembered most for the ending that could have been, for Lynch and for the Seahawks, but wasn’t.
Again.
This time, it was because of an inexcusable delay-of-game penalty in the final seconds.
Lynch was on the sideline wearing a beanie as Russell Wilson threw the Seahawks from their own 27 to the red zone in the frantic final 2:27. Lynch appeared to have checked out of the game, what with coordinator Brian Schottenheimer dialing up 20 consecutive pass calls to end the fourth quarter. That was as Wilson rallied the Seahawks from down 26-14 with 6 minutes left with his signature improvisational scrambles and completions.
Perhaps the most unlikely completion was to rookie John Ursua with 42 seconds left. A seventh-round draft choice inactive for much of this season, Ursua rescued Seattle with an 11-yard catch on fourth down from San Francisco’s 12-yard line. His first NFL reception had the Seahawks at the 1 with no timeouts.
Ursua’s catch was so unlikely, it appeared to expose the Seahawks’ players and coaches unprepared.
Wilson took a bit before he spiked the ball to stop the clock with 22 seconds remaining—20 seconds between plays for one completion. Then he and the rest of the Seahawks players on the field seemed to exhale. They almost casually walked back to the huddle. Meanwhile, left tackle George Fant was struggling to get back on his feet, apparently injured.
Seeing the sudden opportunity for Lynch to win the game from the 1 with a poetic touchdown to cap his return game, Seattle’s coaches scrambled to get the 33-year-old running back playing his first NFL game in 14 months onto the field. Whether its running backs coach Chad Morton, one of the team’s endless “quality control” assistants, someone on that sideline should have ensured Lynch was ready and primed just in case what happened happened.
Lynch put on his helmet. He jogged a few yards off the sideline. Then he turned around and looked again at his coaches. After (too many) seconds of hesitation, Lynch resumed jogging to the huddle. More than half a rapidly expiring 40-second play clock was gone. Only then did Wilson begin calling the play.
Receiver Tyler Lockett later said that the play clock was extraordinarily fast, as if officials started it too soon.
Wilson said, “We were trying to get the right personnel in and everything else. It took a little bit there because at the time we didn’t have a back yet. So then we did.
“But it was too late.”
The Seahawks got a crushing, 5-yard penalty for delay of game. Back to the 6-yard line, Lynch went back out of the game. With no timeouts, running was not an option. The 49ers knew the Seahawks had to throw.
To make all this worse, the Seahawks were out of timeouts because they had called timeouts on consecutive incomplete passes—yes, with the clock stopped—with 46 and 42 seconds left.
“At that point, unfortunately, we didn’t have any timeouts. It was a hectic moment,” Wilson said. “We didn’t know if J.U. (Ursua) got in, too. We didn’t know if they were going to look at that. When he caught it there, looked like... We were trying to do that. Get George. He was down, trying to bring him over.”
The 5-yard delay penalty is likely the difference between the Seahawks being the third seed and playing the Minnesota Vikings at home this weekend and trekking to the opposite side of the country for the sixth time this season—and, if they win, the rest of the playoffs.
After the game, Carroll took the blame for the sideline confusion.
“We just didn’t function well enough. That’s me all the way. There’s nobody else to turn to,” Carroll said. “We need to get that done.
“The mentality of the kill-the-clock thing, sometimes it happens—we’ve talked about it numbers of times, but you kind of take a pause, like it’s a timeout, which it wasn’t. That may have been a little bit of what happened on the sidelines with the guys running on.
“Here we are with Marshawn, his first week and all that. It just didn’t work out right. I should have got that done better.”
Wilson was asked if Lynch having only four practices in the terminology of Schottenheimer’s system contributed to the delay of game. The calls are different than what Lynch had with play-caller Darrell Bevell in his first Seattle go-round.
Instead of answering, Wilson filibustered.
“First of all, I thought Marshawn, (Robert) Turbin, they were unbelievable all night,” he said, though Turbin, who signed back to the Seahawks with Lynch last Monday, did not have any offensive snaps Sunday.
“Just to see Marshawn dive in the end zone, that was awesome. To have Beast Mode back, just the excitement when he came into the game. It was like old times. Just felt right him being back there. He played a great game. Especially for him playing his first game this year and everything else.”
Backed out to the 6 instead of at the 1, Wilson threw incomplete to Jacob Hollister while the tight end and 49ers linebacker Fred Warner traded contact with no flag. On third down, Wilson and rookie DK Metcalf were on opposite pages; Metcalf ran an inside slant as Wilson’s pass sailed far outside nowhere near anyone.
On fourth down with 12 seconds left, Wilson completed a pass to Hollister at the 1. Niners linebacker Dre Greenlaw tackled Hollister, who reached the ball in vain to the goal line.
That’s how San Francisco won, and Seattle lost, the West.
And it’s how Lynch was denied the chance to win the title again at the 1-yard line.
“Yeah, the storybook ending. That’s usually reserved for movies, Hollywood movies,” Seahawks right tackle Germain Ifedi said. “In real life, things don’t always have the happiest ending like that.
“It sure is tough. Tough to get that close. No matter what happened, it’s just tough.”
This story was originally published December 30, 2019 at 7:31 AM.
