2 unlikely deep passes from Russell Wilson surprise Panthers, but not Seattle

It’s all in the mindset, Seattle Seahawks receiver David Moore would have you believe.

“Every ball that goes up,” he said, “is either mine or nobody’s.”

But rather than rest on his words, Moore had an opportunity to prove that ideology on Sunday. With about three and a half minutes left in Sunday’s eventual 30-27 Seattle victory over the Carolina Panthers, the Seahawks faced a fourth-and-3 from the Panthers’ 35. An incompletion, and Carolina would get the ball back, up 7, with the liberty to run the game into the ground.

Really, an incompletion and the game was over.

“I told the guys in the huddle right before, ‘Have no fear. Let’s go for it,’” Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson said of that moment, “and we were able to make a big play.”

Wilson took the snap, but rather than entrusting the game to the NFL’s No. 1 rushing offense, or even trying to sneak a short pass, Wilson saw an opportunity. Moore — the 6-foot, 215-pound second-year receiver — was streaking down the field with Panthers backup cornerback Corn Elder slightly behind. Because normal starter Donte Jackson exited the game with a quad injury after the very first play, here was Elder in the middle of the game’s biggest moment.

Wilson uncorked a deep pass to Moore, now finishing his route near the far edge of the end zone. But rather than throw up his hands for the pass, or alert Elder in any way that the pass was incoming, Moore waited. And waited. And waited.

And then, without Elder ever having a chance to turn around, Moore rose up and caught the game-tying touchdown.

Have no fear, right?

“I’d seen man-to-man press coverage across the board,” Moore said, “and I was like, ‘Well, somebody is going to get this ball — I don’t know who — but somebody will.’”

Was he surprised that Elder didn’t even attempt to make a play on it?

“Honestly no, he didn’t really have a chance to,” Moore explained. “We didn’t really show any way that the ball was coming. It just popped up right there, and that was it.”

As for the sense on the Seattle sideline when Moore caught it, fellow receiver Doug Baldwin put it best:

“He’s a savage,” Baldwin said of Moore. “He does that every day in practice, and in games when he gets his opportunity, he’s a baller.”

And if that was the only deep play the Panthers flubbed without Jackson, then so be it.

But with as experienced a quarterback as Wilson, who now has won six of his eight career matchups against Carolina, and offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer, who first joined an NFL coaching staff when he was 24, that shouldn’t have been expected.

Instead, Wilson and Schottenheimer paid full attention to Jackson being out. While Elder and Captain Munnerlyn, who typically plays nickel, combined for seven tackles and played most of the game without issue, Seattle’s offensive minds kept Jackson’s absence in mind as the game slogged on.

“It’s a great job by (offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer) and then Russ to make sure that we went after the new guy,” coach Pete Carroll said. “That’s always important. It’s always about matchups, and they were on it.”

The Moore touchdown was one thing. But with a chance to win, they exploited it again.

On third-and-5 from near midfield, Tyler Lockett ran a short route to gain the first down. But when the play broke down, and Wilson began dancing in the pocket, Lockett knew he might have a shot for something greater.

And coincidentally enough, he’d practiced that “something greater” during warmups.

“There was a play where he was out there on the right and he kind of did that same kind of thing, he kind of stuttered and went but it wasn’t necessarily the play,” Wilson said of Lockett during his pre-game warmup. “He said, ‘Hey, I’m just kind of working on something in case we need it.’

“Funny thing is, we needed it and it worked.”

So as Wilson slowly moved from inside the pocket off to his left, Lockett re-created the play he’d practiced earlier. He somewhat overlapped with Baldwin, confusing Munnerlyn in coverage for just long enough, and then took off deep down the field.

Like with Moore’s touchdown, Wilson heaved it up ... and again, the Seahawks came down with it. Munnerlyn tackled Lockett as soon as he hauled in the pass, but the damage was done — that 43-yard completion gave Seattle the ball at Carolina’s 11, setting up the game-winning field goal a few kneel-downs later.

“I saw nobody was deep, so I went deep,” Lockett said. “He threw it, and the DB kind of judged it wrong a little bit, which allowed me to be able to come down with it.”

“Sometimes you run back to the ball, sometimes you go deep. But quarterbacks love people that go deep.”

Wilson kneed the ball the next two plays to kill clock and then spiked it to set up Sebastian Janikowski’s game-winning kick, but those two deep passes weren’t lost on him — or anyone else on the Seahawks — as far as how they affected the game.

Truthfully, they won Seattle the game.

And while the one win or loss is consequential, Sunday’s results were especially so. The loss officially drops Carolina to 6-5, and after three straight defeats, the team is no longer in control of its own playoff destiny. Seattle, also 6-5 thanks to some gutsy plays and clutch catches, now holds the tiebreaker in the wild card standings.

Turns out Wilson was spot on about that whole ‘have no fear’ thing.

“Went in thinking it would be a dog fight,” Carroll said. “Didn’t know what the score would be lie, but it was just a fantastic finish for our guys.

“We needed all of it.”