Dag MacLugh wrote:I mean, the Hawks' center could have taken the ball from his quarterback, and just leaned into the end zone. Or is such a ploy illegal?
linemen are ineligible to move the ball forward unless there's a fumble. in a short distance situation with three downs to go their choices were the play they ran (slant route hoping to catch new england off guard as the expected call is to run the ball) or the expected "hand the ball to your star running back". the odd thing is most of the time on second down you'd go with the obvious hand-off because a lot of the time it works and you still have two more chances with 20 seconds left if it doesn't. they hoped to catch the patriots off guard and figured the worst that would happen is russell wilson would throw it out of bounds and they'd go with the running play on third down. it was one of those freak things where the receiver got free in space but the defensive back saw what was happening and was able to get to the ball first. tough loss for sure.