To: Pete Carroll
cc: Darrell Bevell
Greetings Pete,
I recently saw your interview with Matt Lauer. That was when I realized I needed to write you this letter. Why? Because it became very clear to me from your comments that you just aren’t getting it, Pete. Quite obviously you are not grasping the gravity nor the repercussions of what transpired as a result of the play call that occurred under your watch and brought the Super Bowl to such an anti-climatic and nauseating end—and the only thing more disappointing, disturbing and aggravating than that “worst play call ever” is your obstinate refusal to acknowledge it as such.
Before we delve into all of this, however, I want to clear the air about something here. I am not one of the fanatical “12s”—I am just a guy who lives in Portland, Oregon and has followed the fortunes and misfortunes of the Seahawks since their 2005 season. The best way to describe my position with regards to the Hawks would be to say that I passively “pull for” them, in the same way that I do, for instance, for the Oregon Ducks—or would, for that matter, for the Washington Huskies if they happened to make their way into the BCS playoffs. In other words, my interest in the Hawks is a kind of regional one. Since I happen to think that the Pacific Northwest is the greatest place to live in this country, I also think that our sports teams should in some sense be representative of that and be able to compete at the very least on an equal level with the teams of any other region. I am likewise aware of a kind of condescending bias against the region and the teams of the Pacific Northwest from some people in certain other regions of the country, which also factors into the position I take.
At any rate, I bring all of this up is to simply show that the motive and source of this letter does not come from a place of extremely subjective emotion, but rather from one of relatively objective detachment. It comes from a place of reason not anger, of interest but not overinvestment in the fate of the Hawks. For this very reason I am in a position to be more truthful than many can be about what occurred, because my perspective does not come from a place of seething disappointment. By the same token, I can also be freer in expressing my perspective, for I have very little at stake—in a sense I can “speak for” many individuals who for various reasons cannot freely speak their minds and fully have their say about that fateful play call and the outcome that resulted from it. For instance, clearly the players cannot really openly speak their minds about what happened—after all, you are their head coach. Even the player with the biggest mouth on the team—Richard Sherman—was uncharacteristically mute on this subject. In fact, there are very few people in the entire Seahawks organization who could freely and honestly express their actual opinion about that play call; and those very few who can, most probably haven’t and won’t. As for the fans, they are certainly freer to some extent to express their opinions. Yet at the same time, they can only go so far in doing so; for there is the whole question of being perceived as “disloyal” and “fair weather fans” if they become too vocal in their criticism and disappointment. In fact all of the diehard 12’s I know for this very reason will not fully speak their minds about what transpired. So if ever there was a case of “the Emperor has no clothes on”, this is it. Therefore, I will be the child in the crowd who unabashedly points out that you are proudly walking around naked with no will or even desire to cover what you should be ashamed of.
So with that out of the way, let us cut to chase and get right into the technical or strategic details of the play call itself. While this may come as a surprise, contrary to the widely held censure directed against you for calling or allowing a pass play in that situation, I actually agree with that decision. The reason I agree with that decision is because on that second down, with less than a yard to go, only one time out and the clock running down, you still had the greatest element of surprise on your side. The fact that you only had one time out left at that point is another question altogether and is itself reflective of poor coaching—but let us leave that alone and get to the real point. The reason why you still had that element of surprise on your side was because the Patriots’ defense had no way of knowing if the play was going to be a pass play or a run play, and so they had to be prepared for the possibility of either one.
By way of example, let us say on that second down you opted to handoff the ball to Marshawn and the Patriots’ defense somehow managed—unlikely as this would be in that situation—to stuff him at the line of scrimmage. Clearly then you would have had to spend your final timeout to stop the clock and give yourselves two more shots at the end zone. However, in that case on the upcoming third down the element of surprise would be completely lost; for the only way to stop the clock if you failed to score a touchdown would be an incomplete pass. Thus, everyone would have known with a great amount of certainty that you were going to have to throw the ball so that in the event of failing to score you would still be able to keep the clock from running out, thereby avoiding losing the game without a final fourth down attempt at the end zone. On the second down play in question, however, such certainty did not and could not exist—for you had more than one way to stop the clock after that down. As such, the Patriots’ defense had to be on their toes—you had them right where you wanted them: completely guessing at what was coming their way. Indeed, it actually made more sense to call a pass play rather than a run play not only because of that intact element of surprise but also in terms of managing the clock, since a failure to score as a result of an incomplete pass would have stopped the clock. This would have left you with your remaining timeout and two free shots at the end zone without having to worry anymore about running out of time—and I think it’s pretty obvious what you would and should have done with those two free shots.
So yes, I do actually agree with calling a pass play under those circumstances—but that is where my agreement with you ends. The kind of pass play you called or allowed to go through—a quick slant route into traffic in the middle of the field—was unequivocally one of the “worst play calls ever”. Indeed, given the magnitude of the situation, it must certainly be regarded as a viable contender for the worst play call in the entire history of the NFL—period. Let us take a look here at what was wrong or could have gone wrong with that call. The first thing that could have gone wrong is of course exactly what did go wrong—the defensive back covering the intended receiver anticipated and jumped the route, intercepting the pass. The second thing that could have gone wrong is that a defensive player on the line could have thrown up his arms and deflected the pass into the air, causing the ball to be up for grabs in the middle of the field for the entire defensive unit. The third thing that could have gone wrong is that the ball could have deflected off of the receiver’s hands and then once more been up for grabs in the center of the field for the entire defensive unit. We saw several examples of this during the championship game against Green Bay. The fourth thing that was just plain wrong with this play was the fact that it called for a quick release pass, thereby requiring Wilson to throw what was for all practical purposes virtually a blind pass to a designated spot in the middle of traffic. As such, you deprived arguably one of the smartest QBs in the game of the opportunity for deliberation in his pass. It is absurd for Russell to be “taking full responsibility” for what transpired on that play when you basically set him up for failure with the play call. The fifth and final thing that was clearly wrong with that play call is quite obvious for anyone with eyes to see. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, Pete, but Russell Wilson is not one of the tallest QBs in the game. He never even saw Butler. After the interception as he was standing on the sideline next to you he was asking: “What happened?” Even after you explained what happened, he still was asking questions. He didn’t even know from what side of Lockette Butler had come from—he had to be told. A QB of Tom Brady’s or Peyton Manning’s height might have seen Butler breaking in on the route and thereby had an opportunity to abort the pass and pull it down or throw it away—most certainly they would stand a better chance of this than Wilson. We even saw Brady do just that earlier in the game, awkwardly grounding a pass at the last moment when he saw a defender moving in upon his intended target. To have not taken this height disadvantage into account on that play call is a major coaching faux pas—and again, it is very far from being Russell’s fault. Once more, you set him up for failure by putting one of his weakest attributes on the line in a paramount, pivotal moment when you should have been playing off of and emphasizing his strengths instead.
Conversely, there were only two things that could have gone right with that play call: the pass could have been caught for a TD; or the pass could have fallen incomplete and stopped the clock. 5 negatives to 2 positives. In that situation, those aren’t very good odds Pete. Maybe you can play around with odds like that in another game, or even earlier in that game—but under those circumstances, there is absolutely no excuse for doing so. In your play choice you needed to find much better odds, much less riskier odds, than that. And please, let’s not hear any objections about improbable outcomes, such as how the ball might have deflected off the receiver’s hands and into another receiver’s hands. What I have listed here are the reasonably probable outcomes of that play call, and that is what we should be considering.
What kind of play call would have had those better, less risky odds? Well certainly there were a number of viable options available, but let us look at just one in particular. You intimated in your interview with Lauer that you don’t blame the “average Joes”, the football masses so to speak, for not understanding why you called a pass play in that instance because “they don’t understand all that goes into making the calls” and are “doing the best they can with what they’ve got”. Nonetheless, there were plenty of these football masses even on the other sideline and on the field of play itself. The Patriots had their goal line defense in and were clearly expecting you, along with everyone else in the world watching, to go Beast Mode on them with a run up the gut. Why in heaven’s name, Pete, didn’t you leverage that expectation in your play call? That is perhaps the most mind boggling aspect of your call—not the fact that you called a pass play, but that you didn’t call for play action as a feature of your pass play. Instead, you ran a pass play out of a shotgun formation. Brilliant! Let’s broadcast to the defensive backs that a pass play is about to happen.
Anyway, with the employment of play action, after faking the handoff to the Lynchpin of your offense and drawing the entire defense in, you could have sent a receiver—most probably a Tight End—on an out pattern into the flats of the end zone, and had Russell roll out in his direction. Thus, having marginalized the drawback of his height disadvantage, his field of vision would have been clearer, thereby giving him the opportunity to exercise his intelligence and deliberate on the pass. If the receiver was open, he could throw the TD. If the receiver was decently covered, he could throw it to a place where only the receiver could possibly get it. If the receiver was too well covered, then he could throw the ball away. Additionally, there is the possibility that a running lane would have opened up in front of him, thereby giving almost indisputably the most nimble QB in the game an opportunity to scramble for the TD. Those are a lot of positives, Pete. Conversely, there are really only two reasonably probable negative outcomes of this scenario, which involves the possibility of a defender somehow breaking through the line into the backfield as Russell is rolling out and tackling him for a loss of yardage, and possibly forcing a fumble. However, with play action in the mix, even these two outcomes seem somewhat unlikely, since the defenders would naturally be drawn to Marshawn like flies to honey. And I think we both would agree that it’s highly unlikely Russell would throw an interception in that scenario—he’s way too smart for that. So I’m counting 2 negatives to about 7 positives. Those are pretty damn good odds, Coach—the kind of odds you want in a situation of that import. That’s what you call setting up your QB, and your team, for success.
Now you can wax on all you want about “would’ve could’ve should’ve” and “armchair quarterbacking”, but the fact is it doesn’t take a football genius to figure this scenario out or one similar to it with equally favorable odds. However, it takes someone who imagines he’s a football genius but clearly isn’t to come up instead with the asinine, harebrained, gimmicky play call you ended up going with. I’m sure you realize I’m not referring to you right now, but to your very offensive OC, who frankly has no business still having a job with your organization, especially after the way he threw Lockette under the bus with his post game comments. Talk about “adding insult to injury”.
So ends Part One of this letter—the by far less painful part. In Part Two I’d like to inquire after the deeper root causes of why and how this play call happened. Let us step back and realize that there is a much bigger picture here than strategic technicalities or “processes” as you so abstractly put it in your interview. You see, there is an underlying mentality that made it possible for this catastrophic sports gaffe to occur at all—a highly problematic mentality. Let us refer here to this mentality and everything associated with it as the problem of Positive Pete. This problem is found behind that play call and its approval, and was conspicuous throughout your interview, indeed in all of your behavior ever since the disastrous denouement of the play itself.
As a salient example of this problematic mentality, let’s examine your assertion that the play call in question “wasn’t the worst play call ever—it was the worst result of a play call ever.” Are you not able to see, Pete, what a gross misconstruing of cause and effect this kind of “thinking” really is? By way of analogy, consider the following. A person spends several hours at a bar drinking. Then, clearly intoxicated, he makes the horrible, risky decision to drive home anyway instead of calling a cab, and as a result gets into a terrible car accident. Now in this situation we rightly and reasonably blame the car accident on the bad decision to drive drunk—we don’t blame the car accident on the car accident. We don’t say: “Nobody would be calling it the worst decision ever if he had managed to drive home safely.” It was in fact a bad decision, period—regardless of the outcome. A good decision would have been to call a cab; for the odds would in that case be greatly in his favor that he would make it home without harming himself or others. And if on his cab ride home his cab happened to get in an accident, it still would have been a good decision, and the one with the highest probability of working out for the best. In short, the outcome of a decision does not determine whether it was a good decision or a bad one—it is the decision itself that matters, not the outcome. So it was with the play call in question. You should have made a call that was the football equivalent of calling a cab.
The kind of mindset behind your statement is what is commonly referred to as “living in denial”. All of our recovery psychology is based upon one fundamental and true principal: In order to recover fully from a problem one has to fully acknowledge that one has a problem in the first place. Otherwise that problem and all of the detrimental things that stem from it are bound to persist, for one has not fully recognized and acknowledged that the problem is in fact a problem. Clearly you have a problem Pete, and the only problem that is greater than this problem is your continued denial that the problem itself is a problem at all. Instead, you see this problem as the “solution”—which is just going to engender more and more problems, like that botched play call. There are plenty of other examples of this problem in the interview—for instance, you stated more than once that you are “wired to believe that something good is always just about to happen”. I don’t know what world you are living in, but it sure as hell can’t be the same one I inhabit. Does 9/11 ring a bell? How about the Boxing Day tsunamis in Southeast Asia, or the more recent earthquake and tsunamis in Japan? Or, if you need an example from the present, how does the specter of ISIS suit your fancy? The reality of this world, Pete, is that something good and something bad is always just about to happen—it’s not just one or the other. As it is with the world, so it is with football. Your job, therefore, as a head coach of a professional football team, is not to blindly believe that “something good is always just about to happen”—it is to ensure by every reasonable measure you can possibly take that something good does indeed happen, and conversely, that something bad does not happen.
When my brother and I first heard about you being hired as the head coach of the Seahawks, we talked it over and agreed that we didn’t see it working out. We saw you essentially as a glorified Southern California cheerleader, and didn’t think that was going to fly in the grungy Pacific Northwest, even less with grown up professional football players. So we were both a little bit surprised by the results you were able to achieve and the success you had in your endeavors. Eventually, however, this rah rah rah sis boom bah act inevitably had to start wearing thin. It was just “a matter of time”. Unfortunately, it began to wear thin at the very worst possible moment it could have. Perhaps it is too bad that this couldn’t have waited to happen until some later point—for instance, after you had won your second consecutive Super Bowl. Yet, realistically, that just isn’t the way the world works. You might look at what happened as a kind of message from the Universe, Pete—the proverbial “wake up call”, and one that was perfectly timed. What your team needed above all in that supremely crucial moment was a football mind, not a 64 year old pom pom boy. Though here I am doing an injustice even to the profession of cheerleading. Any one of the Seattle Seagals could have made a better play call in that moment than you made or allowed to be made. Why? Because to a woman they likely would have chosen to unleash Beast Mode on that second down—and despite all the talk of strategy we did earlier in this letter, that still would have been a better play call than the one you went with. Why again? Because in that situation, even with the entire Patriots’ Defense—indeed the entire sports world—expecting it, it’s a good bet that if Beast Mode were handed the football he would have punched it into the end zone. For that’s the way the man, the machine, that is Marshawn Lynch works—he thrives the most when the odds are seemingly stacked against him.
In short, your job in that moment was not to have blind faith that “something good” was just about to miraculously materialize out of a horrible, risky play call—it was to use your brain to make a well-considered, sound play call that gave you the best possible chance for a good outcome. Of course nothing in the NFL is 100% guaranteed—but your job in that situation was to make 99% certain that out of those three remaining plays you had left Marshawn Lynch touched the ball twice. Do that, and the odds are very good that Seattle wins its second straight Super Bowl. Yet here’s the worst part—let’s say you do that, and somehow against all the odds Seattle doesn’t win the game. For instance, let us posit that the Patriots defense somehow manages to shut down Beast Mode two times in a row from inside the one yard line. So what? You would have nothing to be ashamed of. You, and your coaching staff, and your team, and your fans all could have walked away with heads still held high—for the Hawks would have gone down doing what they do and being what they are. You would have lost riding upon the very emblem of your entire organization, its symbolic “style” so to speak.
Instead, you failed—not only your own team, your own organization, your own fans, but the Patriots and their organization, and their fans; indeed the entire NFL and all of the people the world over who were watching that game. Do you want to know what the real “deflategate” was? The way the Super Bowl ended because of that asinine play call. No one won that game. If the Patriots had been able to stop you right in the heart of your team’s strongest offensive attribute, then they could have been proud of their victory and would have deserved to win. Instead you just handed it to them on a platter doing something completely unrepresentative of your team’s identity. Everyone lost because of that. Everyone was failed. Everyone walked away scratching their heads and feeling robbed of the epic ending—one way or the other—that everyone deserved. No one on the Patriots’ side of the ball—coach, player or fan—could honestly feel like they really won and deserved to win that game. You even took the air out of their “victory”. All their celebrations rang hollow, for clearly they “won” by default. They “won” because of one of the worst coaching gaffes ever. At the end of the day it’s really quite simple. All you had to do was make the right call, and even if you had lost, everyone on some level would have won. Most probably, however, Seattle would have won, and you would have cemented your legacy as one of the greatest coaches in NFL history. But that didn’t happen, did it? Why? Because you have a problem.
To conclude, the wake up call has come. It’s time to pick up the phone and answer it. It’s time, however late it might be, for you to grow up Pete. It’s time to quit prancing up and down the sidelines in that majorette outfit, and start coaching—really coaching—your football team. That is what you are getting paid, after all, to do—and paid quite handsomely. So start doing a better job at it. I’m not suggesting here that you become some kind of gloomy pessimist that always looks on the negative side of everything. Yet there is a fine line between optimism and pessimism—it is called realism. It’s time to find it. Take a look, for instance, at the coach who was on the other sideline that day. In spite of all the subterranean chatter about “cheating”, four Super Bowl Championships is quite an impressive accomplishment. And really, let’s face it—ultimately you were outcoached in that game, and that was why in the end you lost it. As soon as you lined up for that play, they knew what you were running. They had scouted it in practice. That was how Browner was able to jam Kearse’s attempted pick. That was how Butler was able to jump the route so quickly and intercept the pass. He knew what was coming—he had been burned on it in practice and they had pounded it into his head to be ready for it when it came. And boy was he. That is called good coaching. That is called “ensuring by every reasonable measure you can possibly take that something good does indeed happen, and conversely, that something bad does not happen”. It’s pretty obvious by just about everything Belichick does that he does not operate upon a model of blind, optimistic faith—and the results speak for themselves.
Now I’m also not suggesting here that you emulate him and become some taciturn, sour-pussed, hoody-wearing football monk. I am suggesting, however, that it is perhaps time for you to do some refashioning of yourself and your approach to coaching, your “coaching style” so to speak. You don’t have to become a clone of Belichick, or even give up your youthful enthusiasm altogether. Perhaps, however, you could find some more effective middle ground in which coaching—actually coaching—plays a more prominent role. Over and over again you made reference in the interview to how you are “wired” to be the way you are. Cut open your arm some time and you may notice that there are no wires in there. One of the great things about being human is that we have a measure of free will. We have the power to override our so-called “natural wiring” and change who we are and how we do things for the better. Consider “rewiring” yourself to have more of a football mind and less blind faith. That is what this wake up call is really about.
Probably the most offensive thing about the interview was your insinuation that losing the Super Bowl the way you did didn’t really matter because you were going to be back in it again next season anyway. That just isn’t the way it works in the NFL, Pete, and you know it. You know just how difficult it was for you to get back to the Super Bowl for a second time in a row. You know how much it took out of your players to get there twice in a row—indeed, half of your defense had to practically be carted onto the field of play they were so banged up by the time you got there. The odds just aren’t with you to get back there again for a third time in a row, no matter how much you believe “something good is always just about to happen”. Momentum shifts in the NFL are the overwhelming rule, not the exception. When you get to the Super Bowl, you better damn well reap the harvest while you are there, not flippantly piss it away from a bubble of mindless optimism. Your players gave everything they had throughout the entire season—they did everything you asked of them, and more. Your fans in their own way did the same. You owed it to them all to make the right call in that situation and those rare circumstances—circumstances that they will almost certainly not be in again this coming season, if ever. The professional life of the athlete, as you know, is much shorter than that of the coach. Chances like that don’t come around every day, or every season. Many of your players will probably never play in another Super Bowl again, and that nauseating, unnecessary ending will be your “parting gift” to them when they retire. The memory of it will be what they will have to take away with them—the memory of their entire season and a world championship being squandered in a single instant because of you and the way you “coached”.
That’s not going to be a very good memory, Coach. Truthfully, it’s just not fair to your players after all they did and went through for you to be insinuating a few days after losing the Super Bowl that it didn’t matter because you were going to be back again next year anyway. I know that you see this as just more harmless “positive thinking”—what you should see it as is just more of the same old problem, which is what put you in the position of having to think that way in the first place. It’s time to break the cycle, and admit that you have this problem. Consider, for example, how you waxed on and on about “how strong we are going to be coming out of this” and “how powerful our togetherness will be”. If ever there was a case of trying—and failing—to turn a negative into a positive, this is it. Seriously, Pete, this is pathological optimism. The reality is something else altogether. Through your botched conclusion of the Super Bowl, and even more through your actions and behaviors following it, you have sowed the most profound seeds of discord within your team and organization. There was talk last season about how Harbaugh had “lost the locker room”. You are going to have a steep uphill climb ahead of yourself this season to keep it, if you still have it at all.
Finally, you babbled a lot in the interview about “moving forward” and “making it right”, and about how the way to do this is to “get to the truth”. The truth, Pete, is that you fucked up—epically. Get it? The first step in really moving forward is to admit that, to publicly acknowledge it and apologize to your team and fans for having done so. But you never did that. Instead, you defended what truly was one of the worst play calls ever, insisting that it was still the right call. As previously discussed, there can be no real moving forward, no “recovery” from this position—for it refuses to recognize a mistake as a mistake, and the underlying problem that engendered that mistake as a problem. The second step, which cannot be reached without taking the first, is to make a change, so that such mistakes do not happen again. The same old Pete Carroll just won’t cut it anymore. What your team needs is a vigilantly cognizant, reasoning leader, not a blindly believing cheerleader. It needs a head coach with a head, not just a heart. It can be both—it doesn’t have to be just one or the other. As we’ve all heard it said: “if” is the middle word of Life. If you make this change, that may just be the one thing, the one random factor that could potentially overturn the otherwise overwhelming odds set against you and your team reaching a third consecutive Super Bowl. If you don’t, however, I guarantee that something good is not just about to happen.
Sincerely,
Emerson Scott
Portland, Oregon
