George Pickens has been receiving a lot of flak for his role in Russell Wilson’s end-zone interception for stopping on his route after he got jammed near the line of scrimmage. Had he run his route, S Justin Reid may have needed to stay wide, but instead he was looking for work across the middle and intercepted a pass intended for Pat Freiermuth. According to Reid himself, it would have been the same result regardless.
“Woulda been the same result,” Reid said via X in response to a Dan Orlovsky film breakdown. “You are correct that I was never concerned with backside WR to begin with.”
Orlovsky explained in his video that he didn’t love the play call in that area of the field. The ball was in the middle of the field and not on the hash. Had the ball been snapped from the right hash with more space on the backside to cover, Reid may have needed to align wider pre-snap and would have been more likely to stay on that side of the field with Pickens.
“I love the play design, I love the thought of it,” Orlovsky said. “I don’t love it when calling it from the middle of the field.”
Orlovsky deduced via his breakdown of the tape that blame doesn’t fall on Pickens. As soon as Trent McDuffie had a successful jam of any kind at the line of scrimmage (regardless of the ensuing route) Reid’s eyes turned to the middle of the field and never looked back at Pickens. Russell Wilson’s eyes never made it to the backside route, either.
Wilson said after the game that he was expecting a different route from Pickens to help hold the safety in place. Obviously Pickens should have attempted to run the route anyway, but according to Orlovsky’s analysis and backed up by Reid himself, it wouldn’t have mattered.
Where Pickens giving up on the route could have mattered is if Wilson had checked to see where the backside safety was. He probably wouldn’t have thrown to Freiermuth and then he likely would have looked for Pickens. But based on the tape, it looked like his eyes never went to that side of the field.
