{"id":438572,"date":"2026-01-30T09:11:06","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/438572\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T09:11:06","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:11:06","slug":"demarcus-lawrence-defensive-play-on-key-fourth-down-wasnt-a-lucky-bust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/438572\/","title":{"rendered":"DeMarcus Lawrence: Defensive play on key fourth-down wasn’t a lucky bust"},"content":{"rendered":"

The key play in Sunday\u2019s NFC Championship happened with 4:59 to play, the Rams trailing by four, and L.A. facing fourth and four from the Seattle six. The Rams went for it, and quarterback Matthew Stafford\u2019s pass to the end zone fell incomplete.<\/p>\n

After the game, Rams coach Sean McVay explained that the Seahawks basically got lucky.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey kind of lucked into having two guys peel on Kyren right there,\u201d McVay said at the time. \u201cI know that that can\u2019t be part of their design, so . . . fortuitous bust by them<\/a>. . . . I can\u2019t imagine that\u2019s what they were really trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

While that may not have been the plan, Seahawks linebacker DeMarcus Lawrence improvised in the moment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe back was too fast,\u201d Lawrence told reporters on Thursday, via Brian Nemhauser. \u201cYou know, if it was a regular design and the back wasn\u2019t [Stafford\u2019s] \u2018hot\u2019 [route], the back would have, you know, waited to see if [safety] Julian [Love] was going to rush first and then flare it out. But he didn\u2019t wait, you know, so that was definitely an indicator, like, a \u2018oh shit\u2019 moment, you know? The back is flaring out that fast, that means that\u2019s his \u2018hot.\u2019 So he\u2019s going to the back first and, you know, playing football as long as I\u2019ve played, I \u2018ve seen so many formations and schemes. Like, you know, you start to pick up on those things.\u201d<\/p>\n

We broke down the play on PFT Live, in the attached video. Williams runs past Love, who abandoned his blitz, grabbed at Williams, and retreated along with Lawrence.<\/p>\n

As Simms noted, however, Williams still looked to be open, even with two men covering him, or at least trying to. But they did enough to get Stafford to move to his next read \u2014 and to ultimately thwart what could have been a go-ahead touchdown pass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The key play in Sunday\u2019s NFC Championship happened with 4:59 to play, the Rams trailing by four, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-438572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}