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| I have no idea what Marcus Williams was doing here |
THE LOSE is in New Orleans for MLK weekend, like I am at this time every year, and it was fun to be out and about, walking in the city on Sunday afternoon during the hometown side’s NFC playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings. People love the Saints here. They love them far more than they do the Pelicans, that’s for sure: we braved the unseasonably frosty conditions here in the Crescent City on Friday night and went over to Milk Shake Arena to watch the Birds play the Portland Trail Blazers – two pretty good teams, two playoff teams – and the building was basically half-empty. So there is indifference on the basketball front, but New Orleans was locked in and tuned in for the Saints. They were watching in the bars, in the fancy restaurants, even in the Jimmy John’s and the Domino’s Pizza franchises. You could tell what was going on in the game simply by hearing the collective cheers and groans filling the air periodically. I didn’t need to be watching the game. I could tell what was happening simply by listening.
So what was the reaction on the final play? I think the Times-Picayune summed it up quite nicely with their headline in the Monday morning edition:
But actually, I think the expletives were the secondary reaction, the first having been a state of stunned silence. I’d made my way back to the hotel, and the dining area was filled with both hotel guests and staffers alike – including one frenzied parking attendant who’d run in, hoot and holler with delight at the Saints’ growing fortune, run back outside and hurriedly park another SUV. The Saints were :10 away from completing an incredible comeback, rallying from down 17-0 to lead 24-23. The Vikings were out of timeouts, were on their own 39-yard line, and were pretty much out of options. They basically needed a miracle.
Which is what happened.
And as this play was unfolding, I kept thinking that there has to be a flag on the play. There has to be a penalty, an infraction, because this can’t possibly be happening! Nope, no flags. A 61-yard pass from Case Keenum to Stefon Diggs, on the final play of the game, and the Vikings win 29-24 to advance to the NFC Championship in Philadelphia. 29-24 to advance to the NFC Championship against the Iggles in Philadelphia. The Vikings may have gotten that miracle they needed, but one team’s miracle is another team’s mistake. And to call it a mistake by the Saints would be an understatement. Quite simply, it’s one of the worst plays by a defense in the history of the NFL.
Or, as we like to say here at In Play Lose, this game was job security.
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| Nope, still don’t know what Marcus Williams is doing. (photo by Hannah Foslien/Getty Images) |
But before we kill the Saints for this, we need to show some love for the Vikings, who are a tortured franchise in a generally tortured sports city. The Vikings were losing all the Super Bowls long before the Buffalo Bills made it cool. They’ve not been to a Super Bowl in over 40 years – during which time, the most noteworthy thing they’ve done is make the Herschel Walker trade with the Cowboys, which is the worst trade in the history of the NFL. They are never all that bad, but rarely all that good, and when they have been good, they’ve found a way to screw all of it up, often in cataclysmic fashion. The 1998 Vikings were arguably one of the best teams in NFL history, going 15-1 and setting an NFL record for points scored, only to lose to the Falcons in OT in the playoffs, thanks in part to kicker Gary Anderson, who hadnt missed a kick all season, flubbing a field goal. Bad kicking is a long-running theme in Minnesota: more recently, they were the subject of a horror film called The Blair Walsh Project.
So the Vikings have a well-earned reputation for being chokers, and what will be lost in the aftermath of Sunday’s miraculous ending is just how hard they tried to choke this game away as well. What do you do when you have a 17-point halftime lead? Maybe not be throwing interceptions, or having punts blocked, or allowing Drew Brees to shred your defense. The Vikings were terrible in the second half in all phases of the game, and the Saints were primed to steal one. It was all set up for yet another colossal Minnesota failure, and you can understand why it is that the Vikings fans might feel like they are cursed.
Which is sort of how the New Orleans Saints felt, in fact, before they won the Super Bowl in 2010, before which they were a joke of a franchise whose most memorable contribution to NFL lore was its fans donning “New Orleans Aints” paper bags over their heads during a 1-15 season. The Saints’ path that year went through the Vikings, in fact – who blew their chance to win the NFC Championship by getting penalized for having 12 men on the field with :19 left and getting pushed out of FG range, and the Saints went on to win in OT. When you feel like you’re cursed, a lot of time what breaks the curse is a break here and there, a fortunate bounce here and there. All sports are games of inches – for example, it was the length of Richard Sherman’s fingers which finally broke the Seahawks jinx – and when you come out the other side with a win and a breakthrough, after so much frustration, you can understand taking on the mindset that you are a “team of destiny.” And now it’s all lined up for the Vikings, of course: they play the Eagles this coming weekend, who are missing their starting QB, and if they win that, they’ll become the first team in history to play the Super Bowl on their home field. Team of destiny, anyone?
Now, The Lose doesn’t believe in destiny – but The Lose suggests you not poo-poo the notion of belief. Confidence is everything, and so much of excelled performance comes from the simple notion of believing that you can, in fact, succeed. This is why so many guys will wildly outperform expectations, often for prolonged periods of time. It may be a one-off or a fluke, and come the following season, they’re not as good any more, but in the moment, the Vikings probably believe they have fate on their side. Fate won’t win the game for you – that comes down to preparation and execution – but fate, and faith in fate, can sometimes seemingly will you to wins.
But as I said before, one team’s miracle is another team’s mess, and the Saints made one of the most preposterous messes I’ve ever seen on a football field on Sunday night. Let’s keep in mind the situation here: there are :10 left, the Vikings have no timeouts, and they are on their own 39-yard-line, and they can’t stop the clock if they are tackled in bounds. If you’re the Vikings, you have some options here, all of them bad. You can fling up a Hail Mary and hope for either a lucky bounce of the ball or maybe a pass interference call. You can try some sort of a hook-and-ladder play, or try to lateral it and rugby style your way down the field. About the best bad option is a throw to the sideline and having the receiver somehow get out of bounds, as the Vikings need about 25 yards in order to get into reasonable field goal range.
But the Saints are ready for that, as they’ve got defensive backs stacked two-deep along the sidelines, intent on funneling the Vikings to the middle of the field. Indeed, Keenum’s throw to Diggs achieves basically none of the necessary objectives for Minnesota. It’s a deep throw, which takes too much time. It’s not close enough to the sidelines for Diggs to get out of bounds. There is another Vikings receiver in the area, which you rarely see, and which makes me wonder if they had some sort of a miracle lateral idea in mind. As far as last-ditch, last-second plays go, it’s not even a good one from the Vikings, and all Saints safety Marcus Williams has to do is grab Diggs and tackle him and the game is over.
And he didn’t tackle him. What the actual fuck just happened?
It seemed as if Williams was of two minds on this play. He could have tried to make a play on the ball, but was wary of the possibility of a pass interference penalty. Instead, he tried to go low and completely whiffed on hitting Diggs, instead taking out one of his own guys in the process. The simple play here was the answer: let Diggs catch the ball and just grab him, hold onto him and the game is over. He went for a big hit instead and he got it all wrong.
It’s a truly terrible play, as bad a defensive play as I’ve ever seen in the NFL. The Mile High Miracle of 2012 immediately sprang to mind, of course, when the Broncos somehow contrived to allow a 70-yd TD pass in the final minute against the Ravens. But even in that case, the long bomb over the top is one of any number of possible outcomes. Part of why the Ravens were successful is that, given the circumstance, the Broncos still couldn’t expect the long bomb, as the Ravens had other things they could run. But in this case, the Vikings have no good options at all, the Saints can easily account for whatever the Vikings may try, and it all goes according to plan … except for the fact that the plan involved actually tackling the guy.
And I feel bad for Williams, a rookie who had a great season and whose interception in the 3rd Quarter had a lot to do with the Saints being ahead in the first place. These sorts of fatal, individual errors can come to define your career. (Mention the name Kyle Williams to any 49ers fan and they will start to seethe before your eyes.) When you commit such a dramatic, colossal gaffe, with little or no recourse, it magnifies the mistake, of course, even though it shouldn’t. Every play leads to the next one, and in a game of several hundred plays there are hundreds and hundreds of mistakes. The Saints were in this position to win because Minnesota had messed up all over the place in the second half – but the Saints were forced to rally because, in the first half, they were terrible on both sides of the ball and got completely dominated. But even so, the last mistake is always the worst mistake.
2018 has been a good year for The Lose so far. Georgia coughed up a 2-TD lead in the BCS championship, the Chefs somehow blew an 18-point halftime lead against a meh Tennessee Titans team, and now the Saints safety goes full-on Toro! Toro! Ole! in the dying seconds in Minneapolis. I suspect I’m going to be busy this year.
