Pete Carroll began his coaching career in 1974, but he said he's never seen a scenario like the one that played out at the end of Monday night's win over the Lions.
"I’ve been coaching a long time and playing for years, and I’ve never seen that happen before," he said during his weekly radio appearance on 710 ESPN Seattle.
Carroll was of course talking about the Calvin Johnson fumble and Seahawks linebacker K.J. Wright batting the ball out of the back of the end zone. The NFL has admitted that this should have been a penalty, and the Lions should have gotten possession inside the 1 yard line. But instead, the officials ruled a touchback and gave the Seahawks the ball.
Carroll, however, said he didn't know the rule and added that he would have done the same thing Wright did.
"That was a smart play," Carroll said. "He wasn’t aware of the rule. I would have done the exact same thing. I didn’t know that rule either. I’ve never even seen it come up, and I’ve been coaching for I don’t even know how many years it is and how many games it could possibly be. I don’t know if anyone would have known that. If somebody did, they did."
But does he believe the officials got the call wrong?
"When you slow it down, yeah, it could have gone the other way," he said. "But look at it in normal speed and how the play actually happened. Anybody sitting on their couch at home can say, ‘Well, I would have done it.’ It happened so gracefully. He did just a little tap on the ball, and it’s over in the direction it was going. It was going out anyway. So you can see why the guy maybe didn’t see the thing."
