The 2023 NFL Playoffs began on Saturday with a pair of games between the Seattle Seahawks and San Francisco 49ers, as well as the Los Angeles Chargers and Jacksonville Jaguars.
Both games featured some notable events, but only one of them featured a play that left the winning team fuming, and that’s the Seahawks-49ers tilt that kicked off the weekend’s football festivities.
To get this out of the way: The Seahawks and Niners game was never particularly competitive. The Niners are the better team and the sheer talent differential between the two rosters easily explains the lopsided 41-23 score.
Yes, the Seahawks were competitive for about a half, but the Niners easily won the second half of the game 25-6.
Immediately preceding that second-half onslaught from San Francisco, however, was this play that barely registered on the play-by-play, but raised big eyebrows on the Niners:
Dirty play from the Seahawks. Can’t stop Deebo or Purdy #nfl #49ers
pic.twitter.com/Byr4CS1LwM— Mister Irrelevant (@EGSporting) January 14, 2023
On ESPN’s official play-by-play of the game, the play merely showed up as “(10:26 – 3rd) (Shotgun) B.Purdy pass short middle to D.Samuel to SEA 16 for 21 yards (J.Abram). SF-D.Samuel was injured during the play. 18 YAC.”
But to the Niners? That tackle from Seahawks safety Johnathan Abram stuck out for all the wrong reasons.
Do you think this was a dirty play?
Yes: 67% (18 Votes)
No: 33% (9 Votes)
“I think anger kind of took over,” star 49ers tight end George Kittle said after the game, according to the New York Post.
Kittle elaborated on how Abram’s play fired up the team, including All-Pro receiver Deebo Samuel and behemoth All-Pro offensive tackle Trent Williams.
“I don’t know why you’d — first off, excuse my language — why would you wanna piss off Deebo. If you’re going to do that to him, you’re just going to piss off Trent Williams, who’s one of the scariest people on the football field. You’re going to fire up our defense, gonna get our entire team fired up. I don’t know what the point of that is. It should have been a flag, in my opinion, but it is what it is. They gave us another reason to flip the switch even higher. I think that’s what we did. I don’t think we need an excuse to flip that switch. That definitely influenced us to play a little bit angrier.”
“It hurt for sure. In my mind, I was about to lose it. I just got calm,” Samuel said about the extracurricular leg yank from Abram.
49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan stopped just short of calling the play dirty.
“I lost my mind a little bit on that,” coach Shanahan said, per the Post. “I was real concerned that (Samuel) was hurt on it. I didn’t like how that looked. I thought it looked pretty bad, the intent of the play. So, I think that pissed a lot of people off. I think it pissed our team off. I think you could kind of feel our team react to that after.”
The Niners, despite the complaints, still won the game and will now await the higher of the two NFC seeds remaining after Sunday’s NFL games, which are underway as of this writing.
The other Saturday game, the nightcap, also featured some wild events as the Jaguars overcame a 27-0 deficit to clip the Chargers 31-30 on a last-second field goal.
“They have come back from 27-0 to win the game and move on!” – @Frank_Frangie
CHILLS#IWATJ | #DUUUVAL pic.twitter.com/Qdq2HW2pba
— Jacksonville Jaguars (@Jaguars) January 15, 2023
The divisional round of the NFL Playoffs will continue next weekend. The Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, as the two highest seeds in their respective conferences, are the only two playoff teams not to have played on Wild Card weekend by virtue of the bye they’ve both earned.
