@Air2theThrown is exactly right. This was the right call. This is a great explanation.
I think people are forgetting the concept of the goal line. When you are going for a touchdown, any part of the ball that breaks the front edge of the goal line, it’s a touchdown. So you can swipe the ball across the front, break the plane and pull it back and it’s still good. However for your own goal line, its an equal but opposite rule. If the ball is touching any part of the goal line once the player is down, its a safety.
Think about it this way. If a player is running towards the boundary, and he extends the ball past the first down line. However, as he is running out of bounds and another player is approaching, he pulls the ball back in before his foot goes out of bounds, short of the line to gain. At that point, it’s short. Even if at one time the ball was past the line, he pulled it back. It’s no different than a runner who runs forward 6 yards, spins away from a tackle and in the process of doing so goes 3 yards backwards and gets tackled. It’s a gain of 3 at that point, not 6.
Think about the play against the Cardinals with Dmont, where they picked him up off the ground and began carrying him backwards. That is an example where forward progress is given and the ball is marked at the spot where Dmont stopped moving forward. Had the Seahawks hit Goff from the front and drove him backwards into the end zone when the screen shot was taken, it would be ball on the 1. However, since Goff was getting grabbed from behind, he was moving forward. Play is alive. He then tucked the ball back in to prevent it from getting punched loose (smart play) and as he fell, the ball landed on the goal line. Safety.
If you want to be mad, be mad at Ben Johnson for calling a pass play when we are standing in our own end zone, and we employ a literal battering ram named Montgormery who would’ve at least got us to the 2 or 3 yard line if we run a dive. To be fair, if you caught Goff’s comments in the post game, he said they did have a wide open receiver who would’ve gone for a touchdown if he had gotten the ball out, but the play broke down too fast. In my opinion, that was too much risk/reward for my liking. I know what they were trying to do. 2 minute warning was coming, so there is no risk of stopping the clock for an incompletion and saving the Seahawks a timeout. In a game where you are up 42-27 with 2 mins left though, the last thing you want to risk near your own end zone is giving the other team a potential fumble/pick and having it go for 6 against you.
If you really want to get lost in the Matrix, what if I told you, the call for a safety actually HELPED the Lions… Hear me out. It was 2nd and 10 right at 2:01. Lets say Goff gets the ball out of the end zone. Now it’s 3rd down and 12 and we are pinned on the 1. Seattle just got the 2 minute warning to rest a bit, and they know run is coming. Lions run Dmont and he gets back to the original line of scrimmage, so now Fox is kicking out of his own end zone. Even on a boomer, Seahawks are getting the ball back on their 45ish. Good field position against a gassed defense.
Instead, the safety is called, and the Lions get a bit more of a break, and with the free kick they are able to pin Seattle all the way back to their own 20 with 1 timeout. Even then, Seattle marches down the field to our 20 yard line with 1:06 to go. That’s when Geno throws the pick to Kirby in the end zone.
Seeing how quickly the Seahawks got the ball down the field, it’s possible if they started from their own 45, they march down the field and score to make it 42-34 with about a minute left. They could then kick onside, and actually have a chance to tie the game on a TD+2. Basically, we gave them 2 points in exchange for better field position, which made Seattle run their own clock against them and forced them into a desperate heave that Kirby stole. Ballgame.
