Pete Carroll’s most infamous call in Seattle has been argued over for years, but a new wave of NFL fans thinks they may have found a different explanation for it.
The discussion picked up after Netflix released “UNTOLD: The Testimony of Vince Young,” which revisited the 2005-06 national championship game at the Rose Bowl between Young’s Texas Longhorns and Carroll’s two-time defending national champion USC Trojans. That game included another Carroll decision that has lived on in football memory: LenDale White getting stuffed on a fourth-down run up the middle before he could move the chains.
For some viewers, that moment clicked with what happened years later in Super Bowl XLIX, when Carroll chose to have Seattle Seahawks QB Russell Wilson throw from the one-yard line instead of handing the ball to Marshawn Lynch. The play backfired in one of the most memorable ways possible, and fans on X started connecting the dots.
“I’m watching the Vince Young documentary on Netflix… and I had an epiphany… with a chance to clinch the National Title over Texas, Pete Carroll called a vanilla run up the middle for Lendale White and it got STUFFED… … could that be why - years later - he threw it with Russell Wilson from the 2 yard line, instead of ramming it in with the great Marshawn Lynch against Belichick’s Patriots? In the end… Carroll lost BOTH games,” X user John Frascella wrote.
For a long time, the accepted theory was that Carroll wanted Wilson to have the spotlight - a game-winning touchdown and a strong shot at Super Bowl MVP. But the documentary prompted a different read from fans, including plenty who never saw Carroll’s USC teams firsthand: maybe that Rose Bowl failure was still sitting with him.
“Got damn!!!! You really might be on to something!” one user replied on X.
“Lendale White was averaging 6.2 yards per carry in that game. Texas hadn’t held White to a negative play the whole second half.
He definitely called the right play vs Texas. But I agree, that play caused him to throw on the goal line in the Super Bowl,” wrote another.
“Damn…I had no idea about this. This is the kind of crazy ball knowledge that feels like it should be enshrouded in an ancient tongue and written on a scroll of parchment,” a third wrote.
There’s also a neat bit of symmetry in how those two moments ended up cutting off dominant runs. After the Rose Bowl loss, USC never got back to a national title game during Carroll’s time there. The Trojans still won three straight Pac-10 titles, but Florida and LSU kept taking the big prizes while USC watched.
Seattle’s Super Bowl defeat had its own long tail. After that loss to the Patriots, the Seahawks never reached the NFC Championship Game again during Carroll’s tenure.
They went 3-6 in the playoffs over the next nine seasons before Carroll was dismissed after the 2023 season. Within two years of his firing, the Seahawks were back on top with the Lombardi Trophy again.
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