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Uh oh - a plot twist. So are you saying (not trying to put words in your mouth) that Pete Carroll wasn't consistent with his own play-calling philosophy on that last call? Or maybe just that a Seattle fan can agree with Pete Carroll's play-calling philosophy, but feel that running Marshawn at the end would ALSO have been consistent (or even MORE consistent) with his normal play-calling philosophy?
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I don't know where you got that from Scott, but that's not what I meant to say. I only meant to say that is not hypocritical to call the first-half decision good and the second-half decision bad because they involve different risk analyses and that the importance of those risk analyses is magnified when you only have 20 seconds left to fix a mistake as opposed to 30 minutes.
I do think that Pete is back-tracking, double-speaking, and contradicting himself somewhat, but I see this more as damage control than the expression of some sort of lotus-positioned, palms extended upward, chanting philosophy. The decision in the first half to go for the end-zone was one that was not that high risk, IMO. My take is that if he runs that same play 100 times, 90 times it results in a field goal after an incomplete pass or scramble out of bounds; 5 times there’s a TD, 3 times a pick and twice stopped short with time expired. However you want to tweak those I still think Carroll played the percentages correctly. Either way, what he is saying is I don’t care about the clock-- I’m playing for the TD.
By contrast, at the end of the game his decision really had nothing to do with the clock, and his statements to the contrary do not ring true. Any mention that he didn’t want to give the ball back to Brady with less than 30 seconds left is insulting to his defense, so he recanted or downplayed that once he knew that it showed no confidence in his team. Any thought that he had to pass to get the maximum # of plays is weak, and I don’t think he believes it. They could have run the ball 3 more times if need be, given their timeout, or could have mixed in a pass or two on third and/or fourth down. So his excuses are made up after the fact, IMO. In any event, whatever concern he had about the clock in the second half was certainly absent in the first half.
So now we are left to wonder why that play call? He claims that it was because of matchups by the defense, but: a) it is not clear that the Pats were in a strict goal-line defense that would have thwarted a Lynch run; and b) even if they were, as you and others have noted a play action or something that provided options was much more in order than a play that carried such disastrous potential. Was it in line with his play-calling “philosophy”? I don’t know, but I doubt it--there, maybe I am now suggesting that it was inconsistent. Seattle runs the ball a lot, and rightfully so–good production with very low risk of fumble. They also throw a lot of deeper balls, which have a lower percentage of success than the slants and quick outs but also have a lower chance of abject failure (interception). This play did not fit their pattern at all.