Seahawks coach Pete Carroll thought the way his guys did it, the right way, made it one of the beautiful plays in football.
But when he saw everyone else attempting it, even he got to the point where he couldn’t vote against the league’s ban on leaping over the line of scrimmage to try to block kicks.
The video clips the league showed during the discussion did not include Kam Chancellor or Bobby Wagner, but had plenty of evidence of the play ending up the wrong way.
“Well, the examples that they showed us were the really bad examples,” Carroll said, via Sheil Kapadia of ESPN.com. “They didn’t show the examples of how pretty it is when a guy leaps over with great body control and makes the play and all. Guys were landing on their head and falling all over each other. It was a mess when we looked at it, so I couldn’t vote against it the way it was going because they really did have examples that looked dangerous.
“It didn’t look like what we looked like at all. I was kind of disappointed they didn’t show our clips, but I understand why they didn’t. It wouldn’t have sent the kind of message they were trying to get done.”
The vote was unanimous, and came to the competition committee with a hearty endorsement from the NFLPA, which viewed it as a player-safety decision. But Carroll thinks the fact other people weren’t as good at it as his guys doomed the issue.
“We were really good at it,” Carroll said. “We were the good example of it, and unfortunately we’re not going to be able to utilize that. It was really just an opportunity to accentuate some of the special qualities of some of our guys, and Kam and Bobby were phenomenal at it.
“When you look at the examples that the league showed us in the meetings of guys landing on their heads and falling on each other and the mistimed stuff, I couldn’t vote the other side of it because guys looked like they were going to get whipped out the way it was going. Ours didn’t look like that all, but they didn’t show our examples. They just went to kind of the dark side of what was happening with that. It’s too bad.”
While no one can question the athleticism Chancellor and Wagner showed while blocking kicks that way, it’s also hard to argue for the rule based on one team’s success. And that’s ultimately why even the Seahawks realized they couldn’t continue.