The Seahawks Get the Win on a Missed Field Goal

Whole-EEE crud. 

But first: that poor Vikings kicker. Somewhere Scott Norwood and Bill Buckner are shaking their heads knowingly. 

In less than 12 months, the Seattle Seahawks have been part of two of the most unpredictable plays in NFL playoff history. On Sunday, the team watched Minnesota Vikings kicker, Blair Walsh, hook a 27-yard field goal that, before the snap, had more than a 99 percent chance of winning the game for the Vikes. 

The city shook Sunday at the sight of the miss; arms shot to the sky and hands high-fived, celebratory voices rattled the rafters. 

If happiness is a function of expectation, then the Wild Card playoff victory couldn’t have felt better for Seahawks fans. A year after the most brutal loss in Super Bowl history, the ‘Hawks may have just that galvanizing moment that enables a team to go on a streak of wins.  

It’s amazing how the ‘Hawks do it. They wear a team down for three quarters and then in the fourth they come alive. Some call it rope-a-dope, some call it biding time, some call it lulling. Either way, it’s proven to be a winning strategy. 

The play that breathed life into a nearly frozen team (Sunday’s game temperature hovered around zero degrees) came on a botched snap eerily similar to the first play of the Super Bowl when the ‘Hawks crushed the Denver Broncos. 

The result though was much different: Russell Wilson miraculously scooped up the ball, avoided the big loss, scrambled and somehow hit a prescient Tyler Lockett in the middle of the field for a big gain. Two plays later, Doug Baldwin caught his  15th touchdown of the season and the Hawks were poised. 

An Adrian Peterson fumble led to a Seahawks field goal. The game looked in hand, the momentum in Seattle’s favor, but somehow the Vikings got the ball back for one… final… drive. 

While Wilson looked tortured by the cold, Vikings QB Teddy Bridgewater looked scared by the moment. The team couldn’t get a play down field all game (the Seahawks’ pass defense looked the best it had all year) and that was the key to Sunday’s game. 

Nevertheless, the Vikes were driving, bit by bit, in the final two minutes. A few dozen yards between them and a shot to win. 

A bogus penalty on Kam Chancellor (who’d stripped Peterson earlier in the quarter) led to the Vikings advancing the ball well into Seahawk territory and suddenly the game looked headed for a Seattle loss. 

We hoped something would happen. Richard Sherman came within millimeters of blocking one of Walsh’s prior kicks (Walsh did boot three successfully Sunday) and so maybe he could get to the play this time. Or maybe Chancellor would hop the line and swallow up the ball! 

And then it happened. 

A missed 27-yard field goal – the volume in the city of Seattle has never been collectively louder when that happened, by the way – and all of a sudden it’s on to Carolina.