Seattle Seahawks fans still groan in agony every time they see the highlight of Malcolm Butler intercepting Russell Wilson at the end of Super Bowl XLIX. Apparently, they aren’t the only ones who were deeply affected by that ill-fated play, either. Cliff Avril points to that moment in time as the origin of where it all started to go wrong for his former team.
Avril was a guest on the Dave Dameshek Football Program Thursday when he divulged this interesting information.
“You think about what could have happened,” Avril said (h/t Chris Wesseling of NFL.com) “If we win that Super Bowl, I think we probably would have won another one within the two years that went by. I do think the team would have bought in more to what Coach Carroll was saying,” Avril explained, “instead of going the opposite way of, hey, this is what we thought the foundation of the team was, and that’s not what happened in that particular play.”
Avril also said that “a lot of guys got turned off by the message.”
What Avril says here makes some sense. After all, there have been reports since then that at least some Seahawks players tuned Carroll out in recent years.
And it’s not like the Seahawks haven’t made a strong effort to let some veterans from that era move on while bringing in fresh blood — players that might have a different take on Carroll than guys who have been through it all before.
All that being said, it’s also no secret that the Seahawks had some pretty glaring deficiencies on the offensive side of the ball that have had at least as much to do with their inability to win more than one title than anything Avril mentioned.