I guess it's no great revelation that some people will politicize absolutely anything, and by the same token they will find a political/cultural/religious angle to things that manifestly involve no such angle whatsoever. And if you're looking to hear from people who think this way, you can't do much better than to check in with the far-left magazine The Nation, which has really outdone itself today.
If you've been wondering why the Seahawks would have called a pass play on 2nd and goal from the 1-yard-line at the end of the game as they did - especially one into traffic that carried such high risk - writer Dave Zirin of The Nation has the answer for you. It was about "optics." Yep. The Seahawks want to market Christian Bible-quoter Russell Wilson as the face of the franchise, and letting him throw the winning touchdown would make him the hero. Handing the ball off to Marshawn Lynch, by contrast, runs the risk that the spotlight is on a grouchy guy who refuses to talk to the media and takes the attention away from golden boy Wilson.
And yes, Zirin is totally serious:
The theory goes something like this. Russell Wilson is your young clean-cut God-fearing media-perfect quarterback. If one was creating a superstar face to market for the twenty-first century, chances are they would look, sound and basically be Russell Wilson. He’s Derek Jeter with a Bible, your “biracial angel” of our times. Marshawn Lynch is… Marshawn Lynch, and if you haven’t figured out what that means after the past two weeks, then you haven’t been paying attention.
The theory goes that there were major financial, public relations and football reasons for Russell Wilson and not Lynch to be the one who ends the game in glory. If he throws that touchdown for the victory, Wilson is almost certainly the Super Bowl MVP. He gets the commercial. He gets to stand with the commissioner. And oh, by the way, he also gets his new contract, one that will fasten his prime, at only 26 years old, to the Seattle franchise. Marshawn Lynch is also due a new contract. Marshawn Lynch, had he punched that ball over the goal line, would get to be the one handed the MVP trophy. Marshawn Lynch maybe gets on the mic to say Lord knows what.
Marshawn Lynch is also playing for a new contract and will certainly get one after an awesome, iconic season. But unlike Wilson, Marshawn Lynch turns 29 this off-season, that time when the ability of running backs tends to fall off the cliff. In Seattle’s own recent history, they saw their MVP running back Shaun Alexander go seemingly overnight from superstar to someone who could barely run the ball, a football equivalent of milk left on the radiator.
The conspiracy theory lies in the fact that Seahawks coach Pete Carroll believed that the last yard the Seahawks needed for that Super Bowl victory was a gimme and, all things being equal, much better to have the iconic Super Bowl moment go to Russell Wilson than to Marshawn Lynch. The politics of race, respectability, public relations and what’s in the best interest of a $2 billion corporation all played into this. That’s the theory.
Consider what you have to believe in order to take this seriously:
First, you have to forget about the fact that the Seahawks had called a running play for Lynch on the previous play and he came very close to scoring. Maybe Zirin thinks they instructed him to be tackled at the 1-yard line?
Then, you have to believe that in the time it took to analyze the situation and make that play call, Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell actually discussed and dissected the social and marketing implications of who should score the winning touchdown, as opposed to simply considering, "What gives us the best chance to win the game?"
Anyone who believes that it happened this way has taken up quite the comfy residence in their own little world.
In truth, the play call was mind-boggling but it is possible to wrap your brain around what the Seahawks were thinking. First, consider this: Marshawn Lynch ran the ball from the 1-yard line five times this season. Out of those runs, he scored a touchdown only one time. You can say it's a gimme that you punch the ball in from that spot on the field (and I agree) but there are some numbers to cast doubt on your certainty.
Second, the Patriots were obviously anticipating the run and they stacked the line accordingly. If Lynch was going to score, it would have required much more than just speed and strength. It would have required the Seahawks' offensive line to move the Patriots' defensive line backward at least a yard or two, and probably against greater Patriots' numbers.
An alternative to a run up the middle is certainly something you would have to consider under those circumstances, but the pass play they called is hard to make sense of. A much better option would have been a naked bootleg play in which Wilson faked a handoff to Lynch, hid the ball behind his body and took off in an all-out sprint for the corner pylon. His speed would have given him a pretty good chance of making it to the goal line by the time the Patriots realized what was going on and took off after him.
If Wilson hadn't made it, or even if he had lost yardage, the Seahawks could have called their one remaining timeout and regrouped on third down. Instead, they called a play that forced Wilson to throw into heavy traffic on the goal line and risk the interception that we all know occurred and gave the Patriots the victory in the game.
As a Vikings fan who remembers when Darrell Bevell was our offensive coordinator, I have a much simpler and more plausible explanation than Zirin's, and it has nothing to do with race, religion, marketing, optics or anything else of the sort. It's simply that Darrell Bevell isn't that bright. The Vikings' offense under Bevell and then-head coach Brad Childress was a horror show, derisively referred to by fans as the "Kick # Offense" in sarcastic reference to Childress's idiotic claim that it was a "kick-# system" that the players simply didn't execute correctly.
But I guess some people have to make everything about politics, race and religion. My take is that the better team with the better coaching staff won last night, and that has everything to do with football and nothing else. If you prefer crackpot theories, though, The Nation is here to serve you.
