A $5B stadium with 5-cent comms? Geno Smith: Seahawks play-call system fails late at LA
A palatial, $5-billion stadium.
With a 5-cent communications system.
That’s how Geno Smith and the Seahawks felt about SoFi Stadium while leaving it Sunday evening, headed for a long, frustrated trip back to Seattle from this game they helped give away.
The stadium didn’t help.
The Seahawks made enough mistakes — including 12 penalties and blowing multiple chances at touchdowns that would have put this game against the Los Angeles Rams away way earlier — on their own.
Then this glittering, three-year-old stadium’s communication failed the Seahawks. At the time they needed it most.
Smith had returned from leaving the game with an injured elbow from Rams stud Aaron Donald crunching him earlier in the fourth quarter. Smith heroically led Seattle from its own 25-yard line to the Rams 39. A big pass of 21 yards over the middle to DK Metcalf got the Seahawks on the fringes of game-winning scoring position.
Smith said with the clock running under 30 seconds left in the game and his team out of time outs driving to attempt to get closer for a potential winning field goal, the speaker in which he gets play calls over wireless communications with offensive coordinator Shane Waldron suddenly — and to him, inexplicably — failed.
For the only time in the game.
Without a call from the sideline, Smith was forced to hurriedly call a play with improvisation, based on the players in the formation and, really, a hunch. He chose a run, inside left by back-up running back Zach Charbonnet. He was playing most of the game because lead back Kenneth Walker injured his oblique muscle in the first half Sunday.
Usually, with no time outs and about 25 seconds left, the typical decision is to pass. An incomplete one will stop the clock. A completed one for good yardage, even in the middle of the field, still would have left enough time for Smith to spike the ball for an easier field goal.
Charbonnet’s key run that the incommunicado Smith called on the fly gained just 2 yards, to the L.A. 37-yard line. And it took from 23 to 9 seconds off the game clock.
The clock got down to 8 seconds by the time Smith was forced to spike the ball to stop the clock.
All that is why Jason Myers’ final field-goal attempt was 55 yards, instead of far closer. It drifted just wide right with 3 seconds left — as if it might have been good from 50 yards. That is, had the Seahawks used their final 30 seconds more wisely to gain at least 5 more yards.
That’s how the Seahawks’ galling, 17-16 loss to the Rams ended.
“I guess there was an outage, or something. But no play came in my helmet,” Smith said. “So I called the quickest play I could in that situation. Try to get maybe, you know, a few more yards. I called a run play. Felt we had a chance.
“It really didn’t work out the way how we thought it would.”
Had it happened at other times Sunday, losing communications with Waldron?
“Just on that play,” Smith said.
Smith was asked if was a tad curious to him that the critical end-game sequence, was the only time the speaker system in SoFi Stadium failed him and the Seahawks.
Smith shook his head from side to side.
“I mean, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just worried about the game, trying to win.”
Coach Pete Carroll said, multiple times, after this game his team lost yet should have won, that the Seahawks did not do the final sequence of plays in the final 30 seconds “right,” or the way they wanted to.
He said he would tell why Monday.
Carroll was asked if Smith had an option to throw on the play when he called Charbonnet’s run for next to nothing,
“We didn’t do it right. I’m just going to tell you we didn’t do it right,” Carroll said. “We didn’t do that exactly the way we wanted to do that. It didn’t come out right.
“I’ll tell you more about it (Monday).”
Smith said he thought Charbonnet was about to break his run for a big gain. That’s why he chose it.
“I thought we had a good chance,” Smith said. “You guys watch the film, you’ll see what happened.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2023 at 7:18 PM.
