After watching the Yankees put up a last ditch effort to win the World Series in Philadelphia, I flipped back to the Monday Night game and witnessed a pretty exciting finish between the rising Falcons and the undefeated Saints.
The Saints, who led by eleven and had the ball with under two minutes left, gave the Falcons another opportunity for a miracle comeback when Mike Bell fumbled. The Falcons kicked a field goal after failing to score a touchdown with about 30 seconds remaining. They would then attempt an onside kick hoping to recover, score a touchdown, and convert the two-point conversion to send the game into overtime.
After nailing the field goal, Sean Payton pulled the ol’ “timeout right before the kicker kicks it” maneuver on the onside kick, an onside that would have ended the game because the Falcons appeared to touch the ball before it went ten yards. Jason Elam then switched up his strategy and booted it straight at a Saints player, who whiffed on catching it, and thus led to the NFL’s largest ensuing clusterfuck, seen here:
I had never seen a scrum as big as this one before, where at least four different shove matches broke out, a referee was shoved/fell to the ground and suavely played it off like he was crawling on the ground trying to get underneath and see who had the ball, and players diving in from all angles trying to gain possession. When it was all said and done, after over a minute’s worth of “we have it, no we have it” and probably lots of bottom of the pile biting and eye gouging, the head referee declared that the Falcons recovered the ball.
It looked like the Falcons guy had it originally, but there is no telling how many times that ball actually traded possessions.
It didn’t matter 26 game seconds later because Matt Ryan’s hail mary wound up in Darren Sharper’s hands and the Saints marched to a franchise tying best 7-0 start.
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