Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson said he was just trying not to smile and give it away. Offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell called it a perfect storm, and receiver Doug Baldwin knew he had a touchdown as long as Wilson got the play off on time.
The play in question was Wilson’s 23-yard touchdown pass to Baldwin in the third quarter of Sunday’s win in Philadelphia, a big moment in one of the Seahawks’ biggest wins of the season thus far.
When the Seahawks broke the huddle, a shot deep to Baldwin wasn’t plan A, but as soon as he and Wilson realized what was happening, both knew the ball was going that direction. With Baldwin lined up in the slot, the Eagles had safety Malcolm Jenkins covering him, and even better for Seattle, there was no safety help in the middle of the field because the Eagles brought an eight-man rush.
“I knew it immediately,” Baldwin told reporters in Philadelphia after the game. “I might have known it before Russell knew it. I was kind of trying to hurry him up because you see it as a receiver. You get all anxious and excited when you know it’s going to be wide open and at that moment I was just trying to get it off so they didn’t check off the play. But it worked out perfectly for us.”
Indeed Wilson barely got the play off, snapping the ball just before the play clock hit zero. Baldwin faked a route to the middle of the field, then cut back outside and burned Jenkins, while Wilson stood in the pocket with protection that was good enough for him to get off a perfect pass to Baldwin.
“You always have plays like that, there is usually like three or four that come up in a game and you try not to smile too much before the play happens,” Wilson said. “I think that’s something that occurs. When you study your game plan, prepared, and guys are on the same page like Doug Baldwin and I, Jermaine Kearse, and the rest of the guys too, you just understand what’s going to happen. You trust that, you trust your preparation, you trust your visualization throughout the week and when it happens it just rolls right into his hands, he makes a big-time play for us, and scores a touchdown.
As Bevell explained, while that wasn’t the play call, it’s something they practice all the time so that when a defense gives the right look, everyone knows what to do.
“That’s something we work on every day in practice,” Bevell said. “We’ve worked on that thing for a long time. It’s similar to some things in past games. The coolest part for me is just the execution. The guys executed at a really high level, Russ did a great job with the protection, the receiver did a great job with the route, the quarterback put the ball where he needed to put it. For coaches, that’s one we’ve harped on, that we’ve talked about, that we’ve coached up really hard, and you never know if that situation’s going to come up. We always coach for it, because you know it can happen, but for it to come up and the guys to execute like that, the coaches are pretty excited about it.
“It was the perfect storm. It worked out exactly the way we hoped it would, so yeah, we get pretty excited about that.”
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