Final play. Carroll indicated that Seattle would have ideally audibled to a different play at the end of the game based on the defensive look that New Orleans was showing. He said Russell Wilson changed the protection at the line of scrimmage when he read that the Saints were bringing what’s called a zero blitz but that he felt there wasn’t time to change the routes. The Seahawks didn’t have a timeout, having used their last one on their previous defensive series. That forced them to spike the ball on third down to stop the clock with 2 seconds left, setting up fourth-down play from the 10-yard line to decide the game. The play clock was running down when Seattle snapped the ball. Wilson’s fade to Jermaine Kearse was overthrown, carrying him out of the back of the end zone. “It was a full blitz and we fixed the protection. Russ did a nice job to fix the protection,” Carroll said. “We kind of ran out of time to fix the routes and had to go with what the route was called and had to make the most of that, and that’s kind of how that happened, and we missed by inches.” Asked if that wasn’t the route Wilson wanted in that situation, Carroll said he could have changed it “when he sees it’s a blitz and it’s zero coverage, meaning it’s one-on-ones across the board, but he felt like he ran out of time to go ahead and get that done, so he just went with the routes and decided to go to Kearse and gave him a shot at it. Given more time, if it didn’t happen quite so late, he would done a couple things differently.” Carroll said it wasn’t a matter of the play-call coming in late. “No, I think it was because … it was a really well-disguised blitz,” he said. “You couldn’t tell all the way until the final movement of the free safety that it was zero. Russ had to sense that, which he did, but it took a while to detect what was going on because they didn’t show it right away.”
