It's well known that there are no original ideas left in football. Good coaches "steal" the stuff they like and don't hesitate to make it their own. A perfect example of that took place last night in the Green Bay-Seattle game thanks to Pete Carroll's observations during a big college football game last fall.
With 32 seconds left in the Iron Bowl, Auburn ran a zone read variation where Sammi Coates released instead of stalk blocking the corner. When the corner got nosey and tried to come up and tackle quarterback Nick Marshall, it was an easy pitch-and-catch to a wide open Coates, who broke a tackle and took it 33-yards for six.
Pete Carroll saw it and explained his thought process to Peter King.
“We’ll go anywhere to find a play, and that one-uh, Muschamp at Florida, no … Auburn. They ran it. Give Gus Malzahn credit. That’s a great play. I kept telling them [the offensive staff and players] this summer, ‘It’ll work, it’ll work.’ But it didn’t work all summer.”
Then, last night it worked to perfection. Below are the two plays side-by-side, and there is no denying the parallels.
Oh yeah...another interesting note about that play: Both Sammi Coates (Auburn) and Ricardo Lockette (Seahawks) broke tackles from Ha Ha Cliton-Dix (former Alabama safety drafted by the Packers) on those plays. (H/T For The Win)
What are the chances of that?