Seahawks’ late rallies part of NFL history that has lots of local ties

RENTON — The Seahawks’ comeback victory over Tennessee on Sunday also proved again that there is, indeed, a stat for everything these days.

Shortly after Geno Smith’s 5-yard pass to Colby Parkinson with 57 seconds left lifted the Seahawks to a 20-17 victory over the Titans, which came a week after Drew Lock threw a touchdown pass with 28 seconds left to beat the Eagles, @NFLonCBS presented this nugget on the social-media site X: “Seahawks are 2nd team in NFL history to have two different QBs throw a game-winning TD pass in final minute of regulation in back-to-back games (joining 1999 Dolphins).”

Told of that stat this week, Seahawks special-teams coordinator Larry Izzo laughed. 

“Who found that one?” he said. “Who identified that?”

Izzo, though, was glad they did.

Because a little more investigating quickly found that one man was on the field for all four games — Izzo.

And a little more investigating showed that Izzo’s presence in all four games was just one of a handful of local ties to a statistical oddity that might be hard for any team to achieve again given the unique circumstances.

Izzo was a linebacker for the Dolphins on those 1999 teams, when starter Dan Marino and backup Damon Huard, a former Puyallup High School and University of Washington star, led Miami to wins in consecutive weeks with touchdown passes inside the final minute.

Izzo watched from the sideline the past two weeks as Lock and Smith replicated that feat for the Seahawks.

“Cool deal,” Izzo said of his small part in NFL history. “I didn’t know about it until Damon sent me the link. I was like, ‘Yeah, I was there for all four of those games.’ “

The local ties, though, hardly end there.

The second game came against a New England team led by current Seahawks coach Pete Carroll. He would be fired by the Patriots after an 8-8 season that included four losses by five points or fewer.

“Yeah, that’s crazy,” Izzo said with a laugh.

And Huard was forced to play in that game because Marino was knocked out on a hit by Patriots safety Lawyer Milloy — a teammate of Huard’s at UW and a former Seahawk.

The Miami-New England game was an early battle for AFC East supremacy that year.

The Patriots were 4-1 as they hosted a 3-1 Dolphins, coming off the last-minute victory that first set this history in motion when Marino threw a 2-yard TD pass to Oronde Gadsden to beat the Colts 34-31.

And if you want to take the local ties in all of this even further, that ’99 Colts team was coached by Jim Mora, the father of future Seahawks coach Jim L. Mora and a former Seahawks and UW assistant.

Carroll laughed Friday when saying he initially thought his Patriots team caught a break when Marino had to leave the game. Marino had completed a pass earlier in the game to go over the 60,000-yard mark, at the time the most in NFL history. 

Huard, meanwhile, had completed just six of nine passes for 85 yards and no touchdowns in his career, having played in just two NFL games after going undrafted following the end of his career at UW in 1995 and eventually landing in Miami.

“They went to Huard, and I thought: ‘Oh man, what a big day this is. They replaced him,’ ” Carroll said. “Because that was a big deal at the time.”

It began as Carroll might have hoped, as Huard’s first pass was intercepted and returned for a TD by Ty Law, giving New England a 14-0 lead.

But Huard settled down, allowing the Dolphins to crawl back. 

He completed passes to convert four third downs on Miami’s final drive, including a five-yard TD to Stanley Pritchett on third-and-goal with 23 seconds left to go ahead. A last drive by New England QB and former Washington State standout Drew Bledsoe — yep, another local tie — fell short.

“Freaking Damon Huard killed us the rest of the game,” Carroll said with a laugh Friday.

Huard would end up starting the next five games for Miami, leading them to four wins and helping the Dolphins earn a wild-card playoff spot. 

Marino was back for the playoffs.

And in another oddity, Miami would play the Seahawks in the wild-card playoff game that year and win by the score of 20-17 — the same score by which the Seahawks won their two comeback victories. That was also Marino’s last win as an NFL QB and the last game played in the Kingdome.

None of that was on Izzo’s mind Sunday, though, when he was hoping the Seahawks could pull out another last-minute victory to improve their playoff hopes.

Seattle did, with Smith essentially matching what Lock had done the previous week when he tossed a 29-yard TD to Jaxon Smith-Njigba with 28 seconds left — each winning score coming on third down.

“I will say as a player, it’s a lot more fun in those games than as a coach,” Izzo said. “As a coach there is a little bit more stress involved. You don’t have as much control over what [happens]. You are not out there playing, you are just on the sidelines watching it like everyone else.”

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The feeling at the end, though, was pretty much the same, Izzo said.

“Great team wins,” he said. “Any time you win, last drive, go down the field and walk away with a ‘W,’ it’s an exhilarating feeling walking off the field.”

Huard and Izzo helped commemorate the achievement this week presenting Lock and Smith with some wine from Passing Time winery, a Woodinville company of which Marino and Huard are among the co-owners.

“Cheers to making NFL history with us!’’ was inscribed on the bottles along with autographs of Huard and Marino.

“It was cool to get that from them,’’ Smith said.

Adding yet another tie to it all, Smith was born Oct. 10, 1990, in Miramar, Fla., about 15 miles from where Marino starred for the Dolphins in Miami, and exactly nine years to the day before Marino’s TD pass against the Colts that started all of this.

Smith said he was never a Dolphins fan. 

But he was a fan of Marino, and he said this week that he was happy to now have something that will tie the two forever in NFL history — obscure as it might be.

“Dan Marino has always been one of my favorite quarterbacks,’’ Smith said. “That’s something I’ll hold on to forever.”