Twitter Reaction: We’re still baffled by Pete Carroll’s calls

The Seattle Seahawks applied pressure late, and could have tied the game with a late field goal, but Blair Walsh just didn't have the distance as Matt Ryan and the Atlanta Falcons held on for the 34-31 win.

Monday night’s matchup between Atlanta and Seattle left a lot of football fans scratching their heads thanks to a few questionable decisions made by Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll in his team’s 34-31 loss.

As accomplished and well-respected as Carroll is, we know one of his flaws is that he has the unique ability to out-think even himself. The man known for making one of the worst play calls in NFL history during Super Bowl XLIX once again got caught up in a poor decision. And while the consequences of Monday night’s actions won’t cost him the Super Bowl, they did cost him the game.

As is expected, Sports Twitter feasted on Carroll’s ill-advised decisions and won’t be letting him forget about them any time soon.

Here’s a quick recap of what went down—as told by a collection of tweets.

Questionable play No. 1: Fake field goal

It’s 24-17 Falcons, with seven seconds to go in the second quarter. Logic tells us this is the ideal time to attempt a standard 35-yard field goal attempt, but Carroll thinks otherwise.

Carroll was likely envisioning something along the lines of this:

But instead, we saw THIS:

Take it away, Twitter…

Seattle definitely could’ve used those three points. (But more on that later.)

Questionable play No. 2: Carroll challenges Baldwin’s non-catch

Carroll wasted a timeout late in the third quarter to prevent taking a delay-of-game penalty, but the worse call came with about nine minutes remaining in the game when he challenged the ruling of an incomplete pass to receiver Doug Baldwin that was clearly not a catch.

With the fake field goal still front-of-mind for viewers, Sports Twitter didn’t let this one go, either.

Questionable play No. 3: Blair Walsh can’t get it done

Those two timeouts surely could’ve come in handy here. – Blair Walsh, probably.

The only person who may have had a worse night than Carroll was Walsh. As fate would have it, the Seahawks were down by three points with just seconds remaining. A 52-yard field goal would’ve pushed the game to overtime.

No good. Walsh’s kick was lined up perfectly, but fell just short.

Make no mistake, this loss is on Carroll. But it’ll get added to the kicker’s list of late-game foibles.

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