Enemy Reaction Special Edition: The best of Seahawks trickeration under Pete Carroll

During his time as Seattle Seahawks head coach, Mike Holmgren didn’t really care for trick plays — this is a man who was reluctant to ever operate out of shotgun — while Jim Mora’s trick plays were usually a whole lot of movement to not gain many yards.

Even as we often debate Pete Carroll’s conservative gameday strategies, we’ve seen him or his offensive coordinator on more than enough occasions spring a gadget play. Carroll is also willing to unleash “Big Balls Pete” on fake field goals or punts, upgrading to “F—k You Pete” when he does those trick plays in a blowout.

In this special edition of Enemy Reaction, I’ve compiled the best of Seattle’s trick play success under Carroll. Seeing as I’m in charge, I’ve outlined simple criteria:

• The trick play has to work. Either a first down is achieved or a touchdown is scored. I mean, do you really want me to put those awful Josh Gordon and Tanner McEvoy interceptions on here? This is literally “The best of Seahawks trickeration under Pete Carroll.”
• No one gets hurt. For this reason I am leaving out the concussion Jon Ryan suffered in the fake punt run against the Los Angeles Rams in 2016.
• Jet sweeps aren’t trick plays. They just aren’t. And with rare exceptions, Seattle is bad at them.

In the interest of not slowing your computers or phones down to a crawl, I’m not including every single successful trick play. The best ones are determined by my memory and scrolling through play-by-play logs make the final cut.

Let’s go!

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The first trick play

Michael Robinson finds Leon Washington for 28 yards - 2010 at St. Louis Rams

Receivers throwing passes

Sidney Rice hits Zach Miller downfield for 25 yards - 2012 vs. Minnesota Vikings

Golden Tate’s shotput touchdown pass to Sidney Rice - 2012 vs. New York Jets

Jermaine Kearse lofts one to Russell Wilson - 2014 vs. Denver Broncos

Doug Baldwin throws touchdown to Russell Wilson - 2016 vs. Philadelphia Eagles

Flea-flickery

Russ to Marshawn Lynch, Lynch back to Russ, Russ to Kearse for the score - 2013 at Atlanta Falcons

Ricardo Lockette’s final touchdown of his NFL career - 2015 vs. Carolina Panthers

Golden Tate Paul Richardson caught it - 2017 at New York Giants

Malik Turner hauls in his first (and seemingly final) touchdown as a Seahawk - 2019 at Philadelphia Eagles

Special Teams trickery

Jon Ryan’s fake field goal run - 2014 at Washington’s NFL team

Jon Ryan’s game-changing touchdown to Garry Gilliam - 2014 NFC Championship Game vs. Green Bay Packers

Richard Sherman and Tyler Lockett are smarter than the average Bears - 2015 vs. Chicago Bears

Michael Dickson cements himself as greatest punter of all-time - 2018 at Detroit Lions

Travis Homer’s fake punt scamper - 2019 vs. Minnesota Vikings

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That’s it for this week’s special compilation edition of Enemy Reaction. The next one will likely be a classic Seahawks game from 2013 — either the comeback against the Houston Texans or the comeback against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Thanks for reading and go ‘Hawks!