Then look at the view below, where the timing is more obvious, and even if Wilson's pass hadn't been high and wide, it would have had to have beaten a charging defensive back to a spot. This is a play you can make, but it wasn't any kind of master call and miracle execution by New England. Plus, running a slant along the front of the goal line kills a lot of the time management benefits of a pass—and even the halfback flare and little in on the other side weren't going to change this.

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The Seahawks are the last exciting team in football, and make aggressive, muscular plays and playcalls. But don't let anyone try to paint over this thing with an appeal to nuance. There is nuance here, but it's so completely aside the global condition of having waved off the best short-yardage back in football at the half-yard line, on second down, on the last meaningful play of the Super Bowl, that it may as well be barnacled along the crust of Pete Carroll's sphincter, because that's exactly where any sort of exculpatory argument will begin.

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