The revised kickoff rules create one very important reality in late-game situations.
It doesn’t take much time for a team to get in position for a game-winning field goal.
That played to Seattle’s benefit on Thursday night. The Seahawks wisely took a timeout after Arizona’s running play on first and goal from the seven. It stopped the clock with 33 ticks. When the Cardinals scored on the next play and opted to tie the game with a single PAT, the Seahawks had 28 seconds to get kicker Jason Myers in position for a shot at redemption.
The Cardinals had an important decision to make on the kickoff. Bang it out of the end zone and surrender the 35? Kick an easily returnable ball and hope the coverage team gets the job done short of the 35?
Arizona went for option C: A line drive that would ideally hit inside the 20 and force the Seahawks to scramble for it, risking the possibility of the next drive starting at the 20, if the ball squirted into the end zone without being returned.
The only problem? The kick struck short of the landing zone, giving Seattle the ball at the 40.
So there the Seahawks were, 60 yards from the goal line with 28 seconds and a timeout. A 22-yard pass from quarterback Sam Darnold to receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba followed by a four-yard run from tailback Zach Charbonnet allowed the Seahawks to bleed the clock to three seconds, and a 52-yard field goal for the win.
Myers, whose miss of a 53-yarder lit the fuse on Arizona’s 14-point comeback, nailed it for the win.
The outcome should put even greater emphasis on how a team handles the clock as it’s driving for a score that could be matched or beaten by a field goal. The Cardinals, in hindsight, would have been wise to bleed more clock before scoring. They still had one timeout left; they easily could have gotten three more plays off.
Of course, there’s no guarantee the Cardinals would have scored. As it stands, they scored too quickly.
With new kickoff rules, and the wise use of a timeout by the Seahawks with a little more than half a minute to go, 28 seconds ended up being more than enough time for a walk-off win.
