Games can turn on 4th-down plays, and Wednesday night’s season opener was no exception.
The Seahawks, playing with back-up quarterback Drew Lock after Sam Darnold left the game early in the first quarter, trailed 10-3 with 11:38 remaining in the 4th quarter. They faced a 4th-and-1 from the Patriots’ 45-yard line.
Seattle had stolen some momentum after picking off Drake Maye on the previous drive, but none of that would have mattered if they couldn’t come away with any points on this possession.
The Patriots loaded up the line of scrimmage and squeezed inside to try and stop any run attempt. They also had 2 safeties deep pre-snap:
The Seahawks had what Lock described as “a classic football play” called. You can see it diagrammed below:
“It looked kind of funny before the snap. Didn’t really seem like they had anybody ready to match Jax [Smith-Njigba] based on what I knew we were about to run.”
I can’t say for sure if Lock was aware of this, but perhaps he understood that the Patriots had no one to match JSN because of what he had seen on tape in preparing for New England.
In fact, the Seahawks called the same play that the Broncos did in last year’s AFC Championship Game against the Patriots in a near-identical situation, a 4th-and-1, albeit out of a slightly different look: