If anyone knows the heat Pete Carroll is taking after the Seattle Seahawks' final offensive play in their Super Bowl loss, it's Jim Harbaugh.
The former San Francisco 49ers coach took major heat in 2013 after his goal-line offense threw three passes and never gave the ball to running back Frank Gore inside the 5-yard line in the loss to the Baltimore Ravens.
On Friday, the current University of Michigan coach told The Tim Kawakami Show he believed the Seahawks made a good call, but Patriots cornerback Malcolm Butler just made a better play.
"I really thought they had a good play call," Harbaugh said. "That was an insightful play against the goal-line defense. A really neat combination that they had, was an inside pick play.
"It really was open and that young man from the New England Patriots made a play, that is a play the stars of the game don't make, and he made a play that was -- at best that ball gets knocked down and incomplete, but to make an interception on that play was, what a phenomenal play. That was a play of a lifetime and all credit to him for making it."
Harbaugh said similar to how he was critiqued for not giving the ball to Gore in 2013, it's an easy play to criticize in hindsight.
"They still had two downs to give the ball to Marshawn Lynch," he said. "In that situation, I said that before, after it's over, yeah you would love to go back and try a running play, giving it to Marshawn Lynch and see how that would have worked out after you know how the other worked out but that's football, that's the game. My opinion was it was a good play call and an incredible play by the New England Patriots."
The latest Around The NFL Podcast welcomes Malcolm Butler to the show and plays a free agency edition of "Who Do You Trust?" Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.
