Golden Tate and the Seattle Seahawks: Four Seasons, One Ring, and the Play Nobody Can Agree On
September 24, 2012. CenturyLink Field. Fourth-and-ten from the Green Bay 24, eight seconds left, Seahawks trailing 12-7 on Monday Night Football. Russell Wilson – three games into his NFL career – heaved a Hail Mary toward the back of the end zone. Golden Tate got his hands on it. So did Packers safety M.D. Jennings. Two officials threw two different signals. The replacement refs conferred. They ruled simultaneous possession. Seahawks win. The NFL spent the next 48 hours pretending to review the call before announcing the regular referees were coming back.
Who Was Golden Tate Before Seattle?
Hendersonville, Tennessee. Pope John Paul II High School, where Tate rushed for 1,413 yards and 23 touchdowns his senior year. The Arizona Diamondbacks drafted him out of high school in 2007. He went to Notre Dame instead, played center field and batted .329 as a sophomore, and somewhere between baseball seasons became the best wide receiver in college football. In 2009 he caught 93 passes for 1,496 yards, set Notre Dame records that still stand, and won the Biletnikoff Award as the nation’s top receiver. John Schneider and Pete Carroll, running their first draft together in Seattle, took him 60th overall in the second round of the 2010 NFL Draft. Four years, $3.261 million, one million dollar signing bonus. Tate tweeted “Praise God!!!” and headed to the Pacific Northwest.
The Development Years Nobody Talks About
2010 and 2011 were quiet. Three total touchdowns across two seasons. 33 receptions for 382 yards in year two, which was actually an improvement. The Seahawks were not a passing team – Marshawn Lynch was running through faces, the defense was becoming the Legion of Boom, and a series of quarterbacks cycled through before Wilson arrived. Tate was buried behind Sidney Rice on the depth chart and competing with Doug Baldwin for snaps in the slot.
Here’s the part that doesn’t quite add up: the team still believed in him enough to not replace him. When Seattle signed Braylon Edwards in 2012, it was framed as insurance, not a promotion. Pete Carroll’s evaluation of Tate’s trajectory – private, optimistic, apparently correct – turned out to be right. What Carroll saw in him that two ordinary seasons hadn’t shown publicly is worth sitting with, because by 2012 it was undeniable.
2012: The Seahawks Announce Themselves, and Tate Is in the Middle of It
45 catches, 688 yards, seven touchdowns. Those are fine numbers for a third-year receiver on a run-first offense. What the numbers don’t capture: the Fail Mary in Week 3 announced Seattle as a contender in a way that a 30-point win never could have. Controversy has a way of putting a team on the national radar.
Tate also had an 80-yard punt return called back that season, a game where he caught eight passes for 129 yards against the Rams, and consistent work as a blocker on Lynch’s runs that appears in exactly zero box scores. The Seahawks finished 11-5, won the NFC West, beat Washington in the wild card round, and lost to Atlanta in the divisional by four points. They were one game from the NFC Championship. Wilson was a rookie. The window was just opening.
2013: Carrying the Offense to a Super Bowl
This is the season that defines Tate’s Seattle tenure. 64 receptions, 898 yards, five touchdowns – he led the team in receiving yards on a roster that included Marshawn Lynch, Percy Harvin, and Jermaine Kearse, in an offense that ran the ball on nearly 55% of its plays. Wilson’s top receiver. On the best team in the NFL.
The 80-yard touchdown catch at St. Louis that year is tied for the sixth-longest TD reception in franchise history. The catch itself was contested – a back-shoulder throw Tate snatched away from a defensive back – and then Tate spent the next 30 yards taunting his way into the end zone. He got flagged. He didn’t care. It’s the kind of play that gets replayed for years not because of the yards but because of the personality.
He was also the NFC’s top punt returner that season: 585 yards on 51 returns, second-most in Seahawks history behind Nate Burleson’s 658 in 2007. His career 11.6 yards-per-return average ranks second in franchise history. In a system built around the running game and a defense that didn’t need to score 30 points, Tate was the offense’s most complete weapon – catch it, run after it, return it, block for the guy next to you.
Super Bowl XLVIII
MetLife Stadium, February 2, 2014. Denver Broncos, Peyton Manning’s historic offense, 13.5-point favorites according to some lines. The Seahawks won 43-8. The largest margin of victory for an underdog in Super Bowl history. Tate caught four passes for 37 yards, which was fine and largely irrelevant – the game was over before halftime. Malcolm Smith returned an interception 69 yards in the second quarter. The defense was the story. Tate got his ring.
The Fail Mary, Properly Explained
The controversy around the September 2012 play has two separate components that almost everyone collapses into one. The first: Golden Tate shoved Sam Shields before the ball arrived. That’s offensive pass interference. The NFL, in its official response the following day, conceded this. It was uncalled. End of that argument.
The second question – who actually caught the ball – is genuinely less clear than the internet consensus suggests. Under the NFL’s simultaneous possession rule, when two players come down with the ball and neither has sole control, the catch is awarded to the offense. Side judge Lance Easley, who threw the touchdown signal, later said: “I got over there and looked down, and it was like a meatball with spaghetti wrapped all around it. By rule, I got it right.” The NFL backed the ruling on possession, conceded only the missed interference.
Tate’s own account has shifted slightly across retellings. In the immediate aftermath: “We both had possession of it. I don’t even know the rule but I guess the tie goes to the receiver.” Asked if he got his hands on the pass before Jennings, he said: “I think so. Oh, well maybe he did. But I took it from him.” That last sentence is doing a lot of work.
Packers coach Mike McCarthy stood on the sideline convinced the ruling would be overturned. He later described watching the review official walking back to the boundary: “I said, ‘Holy s—. He doesn’t have the balls to overturn it. He looked nervous.'”
Two days after the game, the NFL and the NFL Referees Association settled their labor dispute. Whatever you think of the call, the play ended the lockout that had been quietly embarrassing the league since August. Roger Goodell acknowledged as much. The Fail Mary was the accelerant, and it worked.
What the Rule Actually Says
Simultaneous possession in the NFL: if two players catch a pass at the same time, neither with clear sole control, the offense gets the ball. The rule was designed for tip drills and pile-ups where a definitive call is impossible. The Fail Mary is the most prominent application of the rule in league history, and the reason it remains contested is that most viewers – and most of the Packers’ roster – believed Jennings had sole possession before Tate got his second hand on the ball. “Simultaneous” is doing heavy lifting in the official account. Most plays end with more clarity than that one did.
After Seattle
Detroit signed Tate on March 13, 2014. Four years. The Lions gave him the targets Seattle never fully did, and he produced: 99 catches for 1,331 yards in 2014, his first Pro Bowl season. Then 813 yards in 2015, 1,077 in 2016, 1,003 in 2017 – three of his four 1,000-yard seasons came in Detroit, on a team that went 9-7 and missed the playoffs most years. He was traded to Philadelphia mid-season in October 2018 for a third-round pick. Two years with the Giants, a brief stint on Tennessee’s practice squad in 2021, and he was done. 695 career receptions, 8,278 yards, 46 touchdowns across 160 games.
He never made a second Pro Bowl. The Giants years were thin – 35 catches in 2019, 32 in 2020 – and he spent his final season trying to keep a roster spot at 32. What Seattle built in him, Detroit measured. Neither story is complete without the other.
The Carnell Tate Question
Before the 2026 NFL Draft, Jaxon Smith-Njigba – the Seahawks’ reigning AP Offensive Player of the Year after 119 catches, 1,793 yards, and 10 touchdowns – reposted an Ohio State wide receiver highlight reel and tagged Carnell Tate with “Let’s get it.” Tate, a WR prospect from Ohio State, was entering the draft from the same program that produced Smith-Njigba. The Seahawks were not confirmed as a landing spot. The endorsement was real; the destination was speculation. Same last name, same school, different eras, and as of the 2026 draft, no confirmed connection to Seattle beyond one social media post.
Where Tate Sits in Seahawks History
Steve Largent’s number 80 is retired. That’s the ceiling for Seahawks receivers, and nobody is touching it. Below that ceiling, the conversation is complicated. Tate’s 2013 season is the most complete year a Seattle receiver had between Largent and Tyler Lockett. His punt return average still ranks second in franchise history. He was part of the first Super Bowl team Seattle ever fielded, and he contributed to it on offense, special teams, and as a blocker in ways that don’t compress into a stat line.
The Seahawks honored him as a 12 Flag raiser at a Monday Night Football game in December 2023, against his former team, the Eagles. That’s the franchise’s version of a lifetime achievement – a former player invited back to raise the flag in front of 70,000 people before a nationally televised game. It isn’t a ring ceremony or a Hall of Fame vote, but it is a specific acknowledgment: you were here, you were part of this, we remember.
His four seasons in Seattle produced one Super Bowl ring, two legitimately memorable plays, and a third season that would have been the peak of most receivers’ careers. He left before the window closed – Seattle lost the Super Bowl the following February on a goal-line interception with 26 seconds left, a play Tate watched from wherever former Seahawks watch things like that. He got out at the right time, though he didn’t choose the timing. Detroit chose it for him with a check he couldn’t turn down.
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