Jayden Daniels lies on the ground in a modified supine position, legs resting on the ottoman-sized body of Giants defensive tackle D.J. Reader. The Commanders’ quarterback looks left and then right, awaiting the piercing sound of a referee’s whistle, which never comes. Rachaad White offers a hand to help Daniels to his feet in the way one would assist a grown adult out of a hot tub and not, as the ticking clock suggests, with the urgency of a person engulfed in flames and in need of a hose.
After hundreds of rewatches, it appears second-year offensive tackle Josh Conerly Jr. is the first to notice that one of the most cardinal sins in the NFL is about to be committed and begins rotating his hand, suggesting the team needs to speed up and return to the football for a spike before time expires in field goal range. Daniels changes his default speed to fast-forward and, even then, at least one of the Commanders’ offensive linemen is looking up at the scoreboard, perhaps, in an effort to figure out why none of the Giants’ defensive linemen are set and instead waving their hands in the air.
The crowd begins to rustle as the reality of what is happening on the field reverberates like a shock wave. Dan Quinn, Washington’s head coach, removes the battery pack from his headset for maximum range and effect when he flips the headphones from his ears and smashes them onto the ground. And for almost 20 seconds, far longer than the final play of the game, he stands at the 20-yard line, heartbroken, staring straight out into nothing.
In the box score, it will read like this: At their opponents’ 24-yard line, in a tie game, in overtime, after calling a play that is a designed throwaway, the Commanders, with no timeouts, saw their quarterback scramble and casually slide to the ground as precious seconds ticked away from the clock. Final score: Commanders 27, Giants 27.
In nearly every corner of the internet, it will read like this: Quinn, or whoever is in charge of the Commanders in that specific moment, should not be allowed to coach another game (even Magic Johnson, one of Washington’s owners, voiced his endearing confusion on the entire mess). Daniels didn’t need any additional yards to begin with and should have simply clocked the ball after the two-yard run on the play before. He should have looked more devastated at the podium. He should have been more unequivocal in his assessment that, ultimately, at the end of the day, it’s on him. He should not have said that communication needs to improve from “the top down.” He should have laid out a bed of proverbial nails and fallen on it. (Quinn, for the record, time and time again at the podium, blamed himself and protected Daniels from any criticism, noting only that the play call was either a throwaway or an instant clock.)
But here, I think about the time I went to go pick up my kids at the bus stop, looked over to where I usually park my car, saw that it was not there, sprinted halfway around the neighborhood, burst into the home of a friend and asked them to call the cops because my vehicle had been stolen. Upon further inspection, it was simply parked about six feet to the right of where I usually look. Or the time I handed a fishing net to my then 2-year-old and nudged her to the edge of a pond before gleefully plucking out my cellphone to film what I imagined would be her adorably trying to catch a fish and not, as any sentient parent would have foreseen, instantly snagged a branch with the net and tumbled head-first into the water (she’s fine, and, weirdly is a great swimmer now, six years later). I thought about way dumber things that I’ve done for seemingly no reason at all, because no part of my brain had even thought to warn me of the consequences.
There are times when these moments are not—and should not—be one of vitriol and anger, even though I understand why they are. It should be amusing, sure, but merely at the fact that we can prepare for everything and sometimes, at the worst times, the little fluorescent light in our brains starts to flicker like one of those haunted hospital rooms. Earlier on this very day, Nick Sirianni decided to kick to an opponent with seconds remaining on the clock, and, wouldn’t you know it, the Jaguars returned the ball to the Philadelphia 39-yard line and kicked a game-winning 57-yard field goal. Last year, there was an epidemic of players dropping footballs short of the goal line. One of those players’ coaches, Jonathan Gannon, in the same kind of zombified state that likely blanketed most of the Commanders’ huddle and sidelines, slugged his player in the rib cage. A few years before that, DJ Moore caught what would have been a game-winning touchdown against the Falcons but flung his helmet off during the celebration, which pushed the extra point backward, which caused a missed extra point, which forced overtime and, as sure as the day you were born, a loss for Moore’s football team, the Panthers. Each one of these fatal errors came at the end of a breakneck week of game-specific preparation in which dozens of plays were memorized and rehearsed, meetings were scheduled and completed, training was administered and film was digested at a breadth deeper and more intricate than all the Lord of the Rings films combined. In addition, of course, to whatever all these people were experiencing in their personal lives.
On the football field we rarely call it a brain fart because everyone playing and coaching makes more money than we do. This is a strange bit of logic, considering some of the world’s richest people are the most painfully moronic and out of touch with what is happening in this world. And so, the money merely becomes an exchange of currency for the freedom one has to make mistakes.
I wondered what Quinn felt like at the 20-yard line, with the squeeze of discomfort bearing down on his head, neck and shoulders. I wondered if maybe Daniels smiling was just a defense mechanism because, inside, his brain was on fire and he was afraid to look at his cell phone and, now that every muscle in his body is firing again, he’s worried about burying his coaches, he’s worried about taking the blame all onto himself and he’s worried about how every word of this is going to sound when it comes out of his mouth.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t rage. I’m not saying you shouldn’t comment or post or call into a radio station and scream your little heart out. But I am saying that it’s a useful exercise to, like Quinn, stare out into nothing and think about the absolute silliest thing you’ve ever done and wonder what it would have been like if it happened with millions of people watching. That’s why my read on it is this: Football can be utterly heartbreaking for the reasons you’ll never expect after all the planning and the preparation—which makes it all the more heartbreaking.
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CONOR ORR
Conor Orr is a Senior Writer for Sports Illustrated with more than 15 years of experience covering the NFL. His work has been cited in Best American Sportswriting and has won a PFWAA award. Prior to Sports Illustrated, he covered both the Giants and Jets for The Star-Ledger. Conor lives in New Jersey with his amazing wife and three children.
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