The Tip (American football)
notable play in 2013 NFC championship game
The Tip, sometimes referred to as the Immaculate Deflection, was a play in the 2013 NFC Championship Game in the National Football League (NFL) between the division rivals of the #5 seeded San Francisco 49ers and the #1 seeded Seattle Seahawks. The game was played in CenturyLink Field (now known as Lumen Field) in Seattle, Washington and, being the NFC Championship Game, was televised nationally on Fox.
With the score 23–17 in favor of the Seahawks, the 49ers had driven the ball all the way to the Seahawks' 18 yard line. With 30 seconds left in regulation, 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick threw a pass to Michael Crabtree in the right corner of the endzone. Before Crabtree could catch the ball, cornerback Richard Sherman deflected the ball directly into linebacker Malcolm Smith's hands for an interception, sealing the Seahawks victory. With the win, the Seahawks advanced to just their second Super Bowl appearance in franchise history, in which they defeated the Denver Broncos 43–8 for their first ever Super Bowl win. The Tip is often considered one of the biggest moments in Seattle Seahawks history.
Events of the play
Until the fourth quarter, the Seahawks had not had a lead the entire game. That changed when Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson threw a 35-yard touchdown pass to Jermaine Kearse with 13:44 left in the game, making the score 20–17. After a 47-yard field goal by Steven Hauschka with 3:37 left, the lead increased to 23–17.
“The Tip (American football)” enters the record as notable play in 2013 NFC championship game. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what American, football and notable can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“The Tip (American football)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, American, football and notable provides the most credible route into that argument.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q65084723. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2013.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Tip (American football)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Tip (American football) primary sources, The Tip (American football) archive and American research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Tip (American football)”?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
- How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Tip (American football)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.