I don’t know about you, but I was pretty sure the Seattle Seahawks-Dallas Cowboy wild card matchup was going to be a dud. I was right for the most part until the very end when a memorable NFL playoff moment took place. In AT&T stadium, the Seahawks managed to get the game within two points after a Russell Wilson special to make it 24-22. Two points. That’s all Seattle needed. With one minute left in the game and an onside kick, we all knew what they would attempt.
Except they didn’t.
Let me go back a few quarters. Towards the end of the first half, kicker Sebastian Janikowski rotated wrong during a field goal and tweaked his thigh. Whatever it was, he was done for the night, which mean we got MOAR dropkicks! With Janikowski out, it mean they would be going to punter Michael Dickson, who has quickly made a career off not using a tee on kickoffs and instead dropping the ball and nailing it.
Seattle had been doing these on kickoffs once in awhile throughout the season and they really are a spectacle to behold. They were going to try a drop kick on field goals for the second half but settled for their two-point conversions instead. But there was no escaping the dropkick on kickoffs. This time we needed an onside kick in this form. Except it wasn’t an onside kick:
This was the "onside kick" by the #Seahawks down 2-pointspic.twitter.com/GT8BF2gFWx
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) January 6, 2019
I really don’t know what the approach was or if Dickson timed it wrong, but that is most definitely not an onside kick. I’m really not sure why they couldn’t tee the thing up, but I’m not a special teams ace.
In any case, the Cowboys would win the game 24-22.
I don’t know if a dropkick onside kick is possible and I don’t know if the Seahawks will ever try this again. Outside of onside kicks, they are fascinating.
But not with a minute left and only a field goal to put the game away.