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When Nick Bellore recovered that onside kick to clinch the Seattle Seahawks’ 26-23 win over the San Francisco 49ers, the assumption for anyone sensible was that we’d see victory formation and that’s it. The 49ers had no timeouts so the win is secured.
...Then the Seahawks called a pop pass to David Moore, who ran out of bounds to stop the clock.
Wut?!
Russell Wilson took a knee on the next play and that was that.
Watching it unfold you could only conclude that there was something at stake incentives wise for either Russell Wilson or David Moore... perhaps even both. Wilson came up a few yards short of breaking his own single-season passing yards mark, but Moore actually did have something at stake.
You see, Moore entered Week 17 with 34 catches. He wasn’t even targeted for the entire game until that final play, which got him to 35. Well that was the magic mark for Moore to meet his incentive and receive a bonus.
At the end of the Seahawks-49ers game, Seattle ran a jet sweep touch pass to WR David Moore when they could have just taken a knee to run the clock.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) January 4, 2021
As it turns out, Moore needed just one more catch to reach a receptions incentive. Likely was Seattle rewarding a team player.
Jimmie Ward said that Russell Wilson told him after the game the Seahawks threw a pass in the waning seconds because one of the WRs (David Moore) had a $1,000 bonus on the line. Then Ward realized he had misspoken:
— Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) January 4, 2021
The bonus was $100,000, he said.
Good for Moore and good for the Seahawks running something that has an extraordinarily small chance of something screwy happening. I just wish the offense had functioned better sooner so that it didn’t have to come down to that for Moore to get that 35th catch.