The new TV show “Chad Powers,” based on the old Eli Manning undercover-QB skit, begins with a sequence that would seem absurd if it wasn’t so damn accurate: Chad Powers, a Manizel-esque quarterback for Oregon, costs the Ducks a national championship when he celebrates a bit too early on a game-winning TD scramble, and drops the ball just short of the goal line.
Art imitates life, in a way that will make every football fan cringe at best, and rage at worst. (In the post-fumble scrum, Chad also ends up knocking an ill child out of his wheelchair, but that’s a different story.) Dropping the ball short of the end zone — literally fumbling away a guaranteed six points — is without question the dumbest, most preventable self-inflicted mistake an NFL player can make.
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But it just. Keeps. Happening.
Last week, Indianapolis’ Adonai Mitchell turned what should have been a spectacular 75-yard touchdown reception into a maddening clown show by extending the ball just a bit too early:
The Colts would go on to lose to the Rams by a touchdown. No further commentary necessary.
Then on Sunday, Arizona’s Emari Demercado, the end zone just inches away, decided to cast off the football like an empty coffee cup … before crossing the goal line:
Arizona was leading 21-6 before Demercado crossed the goal line … and lost 22-21. Again, no further commentary necessary.
The rule that turns a fumble into the end zone into a touchback draws plenty of criticism when it comes at the end of a long, sustained offensive drive. Some even call it because of the way that it penalizes the offense so badly. But when the touchback rule comes into play because a ball carrier carelessly fumbles the ball away, well … a touchback doesn’t seem like a severe enough penalty.
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The routine with these maddening drops is always the same — a player drops the ball as he crosses the goal line. Everyone watching, having seen thousands of touchdowns, immediately realizes something is wrong, the same way you can hear an off-key note in a familiar song. And then comes the review, and the announcers cringing on-air, and , and everyone wondering the same thing: Why is this still happening?
There’s no excuse, no rationalization, no way to spin this: Dropping the ball before reaching the end zone is simply the dumbest move a football player can make. It’s the ultimate expression of me before team, a bit of celebration — or performative casualness, whichever — that literally costs your team tangible, measurable, should-be-on-the-scoreboard points.
Although players have been dropping the football before the end zone — sometimes for celebration, sometimes from incompetence — probably since the game started, Patient Zero for the Drops is probably the Eagles’ Desean Jackson, who did it in a game against the Cowboys back in 2008:
(The funny thing — and you have to laugh to keep from smashing furniture — about Jackson’s casual self-own is that he did, in the Army Bowl.)
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This isn’t to knock celebrations. Touchdown celebrations in the NFL rule! Scoring a touchdown in the NFL is hard work, and deserves to be celebrated! Hell, bring on Broadway choreography, a full brass band, whatever. But celebrate after you score the touchdown, not before.
Coaches need to teach players at every level to carry the ball all the way into the end zone. Touch the ball to the back wall. Touch the goalpost. Take the ball all the way onto the team plane. Whatever, just don’t drop it before you’re in the end zone … or you might not visit that end zone ever again.
