how bout that game last night? who knew puppies could play football? super pumped for the superbowl tonight! got my money on green bay!! go panthers!!!

In fact, this season it was more dangerous to run the football from the 1-yard line than it was to throw it. Before Sunday, NFL teams had thrown the ball 108 times on the opposing team’s 1-yard line this season. Those passes had produced 66 touchdowns (a success rate of 61.1 percent, down to 59.5 percent when you throw in three sacks) and zero interceptions. The 223 running plays had generated 129 touchdowns (a 57.8 percent success rate) and two turnovers on fumbles.

Stretch that out to five years and the numbers make runs slightly superior; they scored 54.1 percent of the time and resulted in turnovers 1.5 percent of the time, while passes got the ball into the end zone 50.1 percent of the time and resulted in turnovers 1.9 percent of the time. In a vacuum, the decision between running and passing on the 1-yard line is hardly indefensible, because both the risk and the reward are roughly similar.

The key phrase there, of course, is “in a vacuum.” This wasn’t a vacuum. This was the Seahawks and the Patriots, and while the size of the stage shouldn’t matter, the matchups should. As I mentioned in my Super Bowl preview, this was a matchup specifically built for running the football with Lynch in short yardage. According to Football Outsiders, the Patriots were the worst team in the league in power-running situations and fifth-worst in terms of stuffing the opposition for no gain or a loss. Seattle was the second-best power running team and the sixth-best team at avoiding stuffs. If there was ever a matchup that called for a team to live and die on the back of its running game from the 1-yard line, this was it.

There was some sort of sporting event at the Katy Perry concert?



There's a play enshrined in 49er history called "the catch". This was the opposite of that.


- mark 2-02-2015 7:55 pm

i dont remember vin scully doing football but he did from 75-82 on cbs. this might have been his last game (it was the nfc championship not the superbowl, btw) as he was edged out by pat summerall to broadcast with john madden as cbs "a" team. here he was paired with hank stram on the "b" team. in 83 he went over to nbc and only did baseball and golf.

dancing sharks, ftw. that is all.

"... last night’s Super Bowl is now the most watched show in U.S. TV history."
- dave 2-02-2015 10:24 pm

missed it.
- bill 2-03-2015 1:51 am

i was rooting for new england. great game and I enjoyed Katy Perry

Is there a Portland/Seattle animus?
- alex 2-03-2015 12:34 pm

absolutely for soccer
- linda 2-03-2015 9:20 pm

fills me with a patriotic fervor and hope for the future.

The Seahawks are very popular here, the reasoning goes that it's because we don't have a pro football team. But we don't have a major league baseball team either so where are all the Mariners fans?

Wasn't there a baseball team at Providence Park before it became the Timbers home?
- linda 2-05-2015 3:04 pm

did you really notice the seahawks fans before the last few years since theyve been very good? the mariners have sucked for a long time. i bet when they were good 20 years ago it was different. plus football is the alpha sport in america now.
- dave 2-05-2015 4:02 pm