All football including Liverpoo 4 Man City 3 earlier this morning.
Holy crap, Manchester City lost a game? That is a first. At least it was not to Swansea – that would have hurt.
To me it looked like brain freeze:
- At first, he thought he could make a play and break up the pass. He accelerates to the receiver at the ball.
- As he approaches the receiver and the ball, he realizes he’s too late arriving to break it up. And, the ball is up high and he can’t get to it. Not wanting a PI call (which would give MIN the ball at that spot for one last play, likely a game winning FG try), he swerves away at the last second to avoid contact. He didn’t try to tackle and miss, he misplayed it and then avoided any PI contact.
- At some point as he’s doing this, as he’s flying past the receiver having successfully avoided PI contact, all of the following flashed through his mind in a split second:
“Holy shit, I’ve got no help behind me!
I am the contain guy!!
Oops, did I ever fuck up!
We’re fucked!
We just lost this game.”
I will make a bold prediction: Blake Bortles will not have 4 TD passes against New England. He’ll be lucky to have even one.
What I don’t understand is why, oh why, are Steelers fans loathing the offense right now? They’re defense has been lit up like a Christmas tree in several games this year by teams that really were not that good on offense at all - including Baltimore and now Jacksonville on 2 separate occasions. Wasn’t Mike Tomlin a defensive coach?
I’ve defended Mike Tomlin. I felt he was criticized unfairly for probably the first 5-7 years of his tenure, getting dinged for not winning enough despite winning one Super Bowl and competitively losing in another. But the veteran discipline that held the team together during those early years is slipping. It’s clear that in some games, the Steelers are just not prepared. And some of the situational coaching is just unreal - like in a bad way. And now that Tomlin is probably losing arguably his best hire, Todd Haley, I wonder how much longer his own tenure lasts.
This.
He mistimed the play, though I would argue the problem was not arriving too late but rather arriving at the ball too early. It looked like he got fooled on the route. He was initially protecting against the deep ball in the end zone, which was exactly what he was paid to do up to the point when he realized that the pass was going to be a sidelines pass at the 35. In an instant, he goes from protecting against the deep ball to trying to break up a sideline pass. All good so far, and if anything, it’s actually pretty impressive that he can react that quickly.
Unfortunately, this is where it all starts to break down. Realizing it’s a sideline pass that could get the Vikes to the 35 yard line with time remaining, he immediately races over to disrupt the pass. However, as you say, it seems like he gets there so early that he could be flagged for PI. At this point, as you also suggest, this is where he might have gotten confused. In an instant, he’s not sure how to respond, so he reacts by shooting low in an attempt to disrupt his motion while catching the ball. In his mind, at that moment, this might not be ideal, but it’s better than a) slowing up and letting him make an easy catch in bounds, and b) hitting him higher and making a PI call easier, thus having the same result as a catch. As ridiculous as he looked on the play, I actually see it as a case of a defender being cursed by his own great play recognition and reflexes.
Edited to add, he had every reason not to play him soft. If he stays behind the receiver and lets him come down with the ball, he could still get burned with yards after the catch. I think the problem is that he just mistimed the play. If he arrives a half second later, then the receiver is coming down with the ball and he puts him down on the turf with a hard tackle, possibly even in bounds and eating up clock. It just didn’t work out that way this time.
And this.
Yes, he arrived too early.
And the announcers who criticized him for not wrapping him up — a basic tackle after the receiver catches the ball, well that’s not good either. It still gives the Vikings that FG try. He did not want to do that. Good point about his reflexes and reactions being so good.
More. So really, he’s exonerated because if he wraps up the receiver, the Vikings still get that FG try and likely win the game. If he gets a PI call against him, the Vikings still get that FG try and likely win the game. The ball was delivered well by QB Case Keenum, nice and high so that only WR Stefon Diggs could get it. Saints DB Marcus Williams probably thinks the play was his to make, but as asahi describes so well, there wasn’t much he could’ve done better.
Oh yes, with the benefit of hindsight and time, we can now say Marcus Williams should not have reacted so quickly, he should’ve delayed by about maybe 0.10 seconds, so he could time his hit on Stefon Diggs and take his legs out after or as the ball was hitting Diggs’ hands so as to break up the catch, yes that is possible. But in the time that the play occurred, no, not possible to adjust and do that, me thinks.
So I exonerate Marcus Williams.
This finish reminds me of The Music City Miracle. It had to be a score on the final play, it was totally unexpected, and they got very lucky! Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good. Although the MCM was a play by design, and this one was more lucky — so, it’s more of a miracle, really. More like the Immaculate Reception. Yes that’s it.
Will the 2017 Vikings mimic the 1999 STL Rams? Highly touted QB goes down with injury, and journeyman QB takes them to the promised land? I haven’t been following the NFL too closely this year, but I’m sure that story line has been talked about.
I’m not a Vikings fan but they’ve had such terrible luck. I followed football in the 1970s and they had a strong team but could never win it all. Still remember Tarkenton’s pass in the Super Bowl, deflected back to him by LC Greenwood.
Also, it’s amazing we have 3 teams in the hunt who’ve never won the Super Bowl. Somewhere, Pete Rozelle is smiling happily in Parity Heaven.
For the same reason that Chiefs fans are blaming Alex Smith for blowing leads. Yeah, it’s probably time to see if Mahomes is the future, and, yeah, it would have been nice to put up some insurance points, but I think a lot of that blame goes to the play calling. In the meantime, the defense needs to defend large leads when the offense hands them to them.
It was a designed play they’d practiced all season and hadn’t used until that moment.
What looks like luck a lot of time is planning.
I don’t see how. The receiver too far from the sideline to get out of bounds after making a catch, and with only about 5 seconds on the clock at this point, there isn’t enough time for the Vikings to get up to the line of scrimmage and spike it.
The Boston talking heads are busy saying how this year the Pats ended up with the easiest path to the Superb Owl that they’ve ever had, with Tennessee and Jacksonville as tomato cans. Granted, the Tennessee game was pretty lopsided, but I HATE when the TV analysts dismiss an opponents like they are with Jacksonville. Have they learned nothing from Pittsburgh?!
You’ll never hear talk like that coming out of Foxboro and I assume Belichick is pretty clear that looking ahead isn’t an option. But it annoys me to no end that the talking heads (most of whom have never played the game) are saying how the Pats are a lock for going on. Grrr.
Agreed, if he just hung 5 yards behind the receiver and tackled him after the catch the game would have been over. The danger was the receiver getting out of bounds but I think he could have set up to prevent that. Granted, that’s easy to say from the comfort of my easy chair.
Jacksonville had the third seed in the AFC bracket, has the #2 defense in the NFL and the #6 offense. I don’t know why people keep acting like Valley Junior High lucked into the playoffs.
Force of habit. Jax has been so miserable for so long that they’re still hard to take seriously. Just last year, the non-bandwagon fans wanted Bortles gone, and he did almost lose his job to Chad Henne. Drafting Fournette made all the difference.
Yeah, I can’t help but think it’s just that Jacksonville is, well, Jacksonville.
Also, the Jaguars only barely beat Buffalo, a very weak team, the week before. Logically, if you just get by Buffalo, you should lose to Pittsburgh. So there’s some reason to assuming they were a big underdog.
Diggs was only a yard from the sideline, and Williams was lined up to hit him from the inside. Probably if he had held up slightly and wrapped Diggs up he would have kept him in bounds, but his own momentum would have been working against him and as Diggs was coming down he was already looking to the sideline. It’s far from a foregone conclusion that the tackle would have been made in bounds. It was a defensive play that should have been made, but the miss looks far worse than it actually was imo.
Huh? It was an out route, no more, no less, with other receivers flooding lanes. No “Wile E. Coyote, Supah Genius” involved.
Anything is better than a walkoff TD. (Well, walkoff except for the PAT/kneel.)
Just repeating what the Vikings coaches and players said.
They all have to close ranks and keep from knocking another team’s player in public. Some things are Not Done.
What WAS that?? I guess he wanted to keep Diggs in bounds to kill the clock, but he ducked like he was tackling a QB.