On January 7, 2023, thanks to a game-winning drive orchestrated by Seattle quarterback Geno Smith, Pete Carroll’s Seattle Seahawks inched ahead of the Arizona Cardinals to win a 21-20 nailbiter of a season finale. Nevertheless this game still signalled the end of the Seahawks season. You may say, “I’m a South Florida football fan, why do I care?”
Two Teams, Forever Intertwined
For a fleeting, but memorable moment in the twilight of the 2023 season, the Seahawks and the Dolphins overlapped like few teams ever have in NFL history. In the annals of football history, the 1999 Dolphins and the 2023 Seahawks remain interlocked as the only two teams to secure victory on game-winning drives in back-to-back weeks, led by two different quarterbacks.
In 1999, the Dolphins set a record that was theirs and theirs alone – as the only team in history that went on consecutive game-winning drives with two different quarterbacks. No wonder Seattle Coach Pete Carroll raved about the “beautiful football” on full display when, in one of the rarest of feats, his Seahawks replicated the accomplishment in 2023. To make the quality of these two similar storylines even more remarkable, the Dolphins won one of these tight games against Seattle Coach Pete Carroll.
The Pete Carroll Effect
That’s the same Pete Carroll whose Seahawks accomplished the feat in weeks 15 and 16 of the 2023 season. Overall in 2023, the Seahawks amassed nine wins, with six of them, interestingly, on game winning drives. In week 15, starting quarterback Geno Smith was out, and Drew Lock came in and seamlessly fit in with Pete Carroll’s formula of fight and energy. “Last week it was Drew taking us down the field, this week it was Geno taking us down the field,” Carroll was pleased to reflect after the game.
With reins in hand, Drew Lock drove his team 91 yards down the field to score the go-ahead touchdown that propelled his team over the Philadelphia Eagles, 20-17. Coach Carroll clearly had his whole team buying in, “Everybody kept believing that we could do something,” he mused after the game.
A week later, starting quarterback Geno Smith returned to the lineup and ended the next game with a 75-yard drive to secure another 3-point win for the Seahawks, this time over the Tennessee Titans. He pulled it off with 1:52 left to work with on the clock. Thus football fans have two game-winning drives in a row in two weeks with two different quarterbacks. Full of his trademark enthusiasm, Coach Carroll told the media after the game: “To throw the touchdown to win the football game… that’s amazing stuff.” So, can this stuff even be possible? “Yes,” says everyone on the ‘99 Dolphins. After all, that Dolphins team was the first to do it.
The 1999 Dolphins won two games in a row on game-winning drives, the second coming against a familiar name, Pete Carroll. In week four of the 1999 season, the final season of the Jimmy Johnson and Dan Marino collaboration, Miami wide receiver Oronde Gadsden caught a pass with just 27 seconds left in the game to secure a 34-31 victory over Indianapolis.
Key Takeaways from the ‘99 Dolphins
Just the following week, Marino’s back-up quarterback Damon Huard found fullback Stanley Pritchett with only 38 seconds on the clock. The end result was a 31-30 win for the teal and orange. This game is one of the big reasons why Huard is remembered to this day as one of the greatest backup quarterbacks in the history of the Miami Dolphins.
The 1999 Dolphins won two games in a row on game-winning drives. Serendipitously, it turns out that Pete Carroll was involved again, this time on the opposing side, as the head coach of the New England Patriots. As it turns out, Damon Huard led his game-winning comeback against the Pete Carroll-coached Patriots. Though widely remembered as a quality back-up, Huard was not even drafted out of college. The Dolphins brought him on as a back-up quarterback. He won four out of five games while Dan Marino was out, including three in a row.
The 1999 season ended with a 9-7 record for the Dolphins. Thus, the team would be playoff bound for Dan Marino’s last season. On the other side, Carroll was fired after the 1999 season as the Patriots’ head coach. His Seattle Seahawks were 9-8 at the end of the 2023 season. We are awaiting word from team co-chair and owner Jody Allen as to his future with the team.
“We Found a Way”
When Many Dolphins fans think of the 1999 season, many of us remember it both as the end of the Marino era and the Jimmy Johnson in Miami. It was also Marino’s worst year, in large part due to the pinched nerve in his neck. One highlight of a season that ended with an early playoff exit, was the back-to back late game heroics that Dan Marino and his backup, Damon Huard were able to achieve.
If we were hard-pressed to remember the two consecutive games back in 1999, we might remember now that another team had almost identical back-to-back finales of games. In a nutshell, Coach Carroll sums up the mystique around the unusual records set by the 1999 Miami Dolphins and the 2023 Seattle Seahawks, “we found a way.”