Worst. Call. Ever?

If you're an NFL fan, especially a Seahawks fan, you know what I'm referring to.

Super Bowl XLIX (2015) - New England Patriots vs. Seattle Seahawks

Down four points in the fourth quarter with less than 30 seconds on the clock, Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson's pass at the 1-yard line is intercepted. (Link to video. Warning: content may be disturbing for Seahawks diehards.)

Game over.

Immediately after the play, TV analyst Cris Collinsworth was beside himself.

"I'm sorry, but I can't believe the call. I cannot believe the call!"

At the time, I thought the same thing. But now? Maybe, maybe not. Before we dig into that decision, let's look at a similar situation three years later.

Super Bowl LII (2018) - New England Patriots vs. Philadelphia Eagles

Up three points in the second quarter with 38 seconds on the clock, Philadelphia opts not to kick an easy field goal on fourth down. Instead, they run a trick play in which their tight end throws a pass to the backup quarterback. (Link to video)

What did Cris Collinsworth think of this?

"What a play call! This play call has a chance to be remembered as one of the all-time greats, just going for it and completing the pass. Wowww, what a call!"

But what if it hadn't worked? Would it still have been "one of the all-time greats?"

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This is outcome bias at work—a cognitive error in which we evaluate a decision based on the outcome rather than the quality of the process at the time it was made. We ignore the information, context, and logic available to decision-makers, focusing only on what happened next.

There are at least two negative impacts of outcome bias:

1. It can hamper our ability to learn from past experiences, as bad decisions with good outcomes might be wrongly repeated. NASA learned this the hard way when, prior to the Challenger disaster, it ignored engineering concerns about O-rings in cold temperatures and treated the absence of failure as evidence of success.

2. It often leads to harsher blame for negative outcomes, even if the decision was rational.

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Which brings us back to Seattle in 2015.

What if they had scored on the pass play? Head Coach Pete Carroll would have been celebrated as a genius, especially after leading the team to a blowout victory in the previous Super Bowl. Quarterback Russell Wilson would have been hailed as a future Hall of Famer, and the Seahawks would have cemented their place as one of the best teams of all time.

Instead, Carroll was excoriated for calling a pass play on what became their final offensive play of the year. Why, oh WHY, did he not hand the ball to running back Marshawn Lynch (nicknamed "Beast Mode"), who Collinsworth described as "borderline unstoppable" in that part of the field?

Let's examine the situation, not the outcome, to see if we can answer that question.

On first-and-goal from the five-yard line, Seattle did, in fact, hand the ball to Lynch, who was stopped at the 1-yard line. Nearly everyone on the planet assumed they would give it to Lynch again. But with the clock running and only one timeout remaining, Carroll and his coaching staff knew they would have to throw the ball on either second or third down if they wanted a chance to use all four potential downs. It was part of their late-game offensive philosophy that had worked for them all season. After all, they made it to the Super Bowl.

Hoping to catch the Patriots off guard, they called a quick slant, in part because it is extremely difficult to defend at the goal line. If executed properly, it would result in a touchdown. And if the pass fell incomplete, the clock would stop, and they would have two more chances to score.

Unfortunately for Seattle, the call did not surprise the Patriots, who had practiced defending that specific play in that specific situation in the lead-up to the game. Their coaching point was to sell out and attack the slant receiver, which was a highly unorthodox approach. (Link to video.)

So, if we adjust for outcome bias, there's another way to look at Seattle's decision: It was a great call, but the outcome was determined by an even greater play by New England, due to their preparation and execution.

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Now consider Philadelphia's "Philly Special" through the same lens. Up by three points, time running out in the first half, and a reliable kicker, the Eagles chose a trick play that required their backup quarterback—a player with exactly zero career receptions—to get open and catch a pass. If it failed, they would have walked away with nothing instead of a near-certain three points.

Was it a good decision? Or just a good outcome that we've retrofitted with genius?

The game was tight. Plus, the Patriots had overcome a 25-point second-half deficit to win the Super Bowl the previous year. Philadelphia's coaches may have calculated that field goals wouldn't be enough to win and that they needed to take risks when opportunities arose. But it's worth acknowledging: if Nick Foles had dropped that pass, we might remember the Philly Special very differently.

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The lesson for leaders isn't that bold calls are always right or always wrong. It's that when we conduct post-mortems or after-action reviews, we would be well-served to evaluate the decision process separately from the decision outcome.

Cris Collinsworth saw two similar gambles—one that failed, one that succeeded—and reached opposite conclusions about the quality of the decisions. That's human nature. But if we want to actually learn from experience, we have to fight that instinct.

The next time you're reviewing a project that went sideways, ask yourself: Was this a bad decision, or a reasonable decision with an unfortunate result? And when you're celebrating a win, ask the harder question: Did we get lucky?

The answers might surprise you.