For the second straight week, Seahawks backup QB Trevone Boykin almost played the hero. But against the Vikings Thursday he came up just short.
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll was unhappy he had to leave everyone guessing.
“You saw, there is magic here, and we should have won that game,” Carroll said after Minnesota beat Seattle 18-11 in a preseason game Thursday night at CenturyLink Field after the Seahawks couldn’t convert on a last-ditch drive that reached the 5-yard-line before a sack of Trevone Boykin helped lead to a hurried pass that fell incomplete as time ran out. “We should have won it. We really messed it up by taking the sack on second down. You always get rid of the football there. We just failed to get that done. We should have had two more shots and scored a touchdown, and you would have found out if we would go for two or not.”
Odds are, the Seahawks would have gone for two again, as they did on Saturday at Kansas City when Boykin’s TD pass to Tanner McEvoy with no time left set up a Troymaine Pope two-point run that won it for the Seahawks, 17-16.
Boykin seemed poised to pull off another seeming miracle when a heave to McEvoy resulted in a 53-yard pass interference penalty on the Vikings that put the ball at the Minnesota 25 with 31 seconds left, and then a pass to Kenny Lawler moved Seattle to the 5.
But then came the sack on second down and with Seattle having no timeouts left, the Seahawks had to hurry to get off one final play on third down, a pass to Antwan Goodley that fell incomplete.
Boykin took full blame for the sack, which moved the ball back to the 15.
“The sack was just something we can’t give up,” he said. “I just have to know the situation, where we’re at on the field, what we need to win and what we have to do. I can’t take that sack there that’s totally on me, that’s my fault. This is a huge learning experience for me.”
The sack, he acknowledged, helped lead to a disjointed final play.
“I feel like I rushed it a little bit more than anything,” he said. “I felt like I could’ve got Goodley a better ball more than anything. We gave ourselves a chance at the end to win the game and that’s what we talk about all the time.”
Unlike last week, though, Boykin also had to accept some blame for the predicament the Seahawks were facing in the first place.
After helping rally the Seahawks from an 11-0 deficit to tie the game at 11, Boykin was trying to lead Seattle to a go-ahead touchdown when he instead threw a pick-six right into the hands of Minnesota cornerback Marcus Sherels, whose 53-yard return put the Vikings up 18-11 with 1:23 remaining.
“The interception was a bad play, bad ball,” Boykin said. “The defensive guy made a great play on it took it back for six and that costs us. … He played it real well, it was a bad ball, and the ball was behind. You can’t throw the ball behind on an out breaking route. Like I said the defensive guy made a great play and he took it to the house and ultimately sealed the game for their team to win.”
Said Carroll of the play: “We took the pressure up the middle. The running back missed the blitz up the middle, and he had to check it and I think he threw the ball back inside. It was a huge play for those guys, obviously.”
But Carroll said he again saw a lot of positive signs in the play of Boykin, who is hoping to show the Seahawks that he can fill the role of backup quarterback behind Russell Wilson as an undrafted rookie free agent.
Boykin was 10-20 passing for 127 yards, with the interception contributing to a 49.4 passer rating, saving his most spectacular play for a two-point conversion run in which he leapt over two defenders to reach the ball over the pylon.
“It seemed like he played pretty well,” Carroll said. “I didn’t see many mistakes, I thought he threw the ball pretty well. We had a couple balls we didn’t handle. I thought he looked good. I was really disappointed for Trevone on the second down play when he didn’t throw the ball away. We were going to win the game. We were going to do it again here at the end, and it was going to be really fun and exciting and it’s too bad we missed something so fundamental to us. He just made a mistake there.”
Boykin played six series in the second half, leading Seattle to a touchdown, a field goal, a missed field goal, one punt, the interception and the final drive that came up short (Jake Heaps also played one drive, a three-and-out).
Carroll had said prior to the game that he specifically wanted to see Boykin clean up some issues he had last Saturday at Kansas City in getting plays called correctly and everyone aligned properly.
“He did much better,” Carroll said. “It was really clean. We did have a play, we called time out, we weren’t set up right. I’m not sure why that happened, and it looked familiar from the week before. If there was only one, he’s getting better.“