The Draw Play

Pop quiz, hotshot

How many right guards can you name? Without looking anything up, without any help whatsoever. How many can you name, right now? I’m not just talking current players, I mean historically? All time? Hell, since guard is a very fungible position, let’s not even limit it to exclusively right guards but just do all guards in general.

Unless you are a real sicko, I’d wager your number is small, under 10. Some players from your own team and the few select others. Guards don’t get the name recognition of a tackle; they aren’t visible for fantasy purposes, and they don’t touch the ball or direct the line like a center.

I can name 7. Chris Snee and Rich Seubert (the two guards from the Giants/Eli SB era). Quenton Nelson and Zack Martin, who were both probably the best-known and respected guards of the past decade. Gene Upshaw and John Hannah, both hall of farmers. But I know Gene Upshaw more for his NFLPA work.

I can remember one more: Dan Connolly. Because of this one play.

One of those fun dudes just hanging out questions is “if you had a time machine and the power to change one play in NFL history, what would it be?” I genuinely think this play is on my shortlist. I think the fact that Connolly didn’t score is one of the greatest tragedies in modern football. This is the “Fat Man running with football” play. There have been fatter men who ran with the football. There have been many fat men who scored with football. This one remains my, and many other people’s, favorite. Many people rank this among the best kick returns of all time despite no touchdown and the fact that the play is mostly because the Packers special teams was awful. That is how special Dan’s return was.

The Packers had just scored a TD with 2 minutes before halftime against the Patriots. They decided to squib kick it, a semi-rare tactic of doing a shorter, goofy kick that attempts to neutralize the return by making the ball more chaotic by causing it to bounce. The tactic is to keep the ball out of the main returner’s hands and make the ball do chaotic hops that prevent the receiving team from properly setting up blocks. Put the ball in the hands of someone who sucks at returning and handling, like a right guard.

By god, that’s Dan Connolly’s music!

Big Dan gets the kick, tucks it tightly between his two arms and just runs forward, pretty much expecting to get hit. The Packers don’t touch him. Suddenly Dan is free down the left-hand side, so free that he actually has to take an arm off the ball to act as a counterbalance as he runs top speed. Al Michaels is losing his mind in the booth. Collinsworth is cracking up.

Connolly actually manages to stiff-arm a tackler and make a devious cutback before the Packers finally drag him down at the 4 yard line, robbing us of the greatest kick return TD in NFL history by human volume. The Pats would score soon afterwards, making the tackle feel even worse in retrospect, because all it did was prevent this play from being even more glorious.

But it says something about how great it was that it is remembered anyway. The big man rumbling down the field as Al Michaels turns into a little kid in his shock is one of the best calls in football. We were all Al Michaels at that moment. Even at the time, as a massive Patriots hater, god I wanted to see Connolly score. Every time I watch the replay I desperately want Connolly to score.

It might be the best Right Guard play in history, and it wasn’t even a play where he was a Right Guard. Connolly was mostly a backup for much of his career as he was undrafted, but he worked his way through the team to have a respectable run and he managed to squeeze into just one of the Patriots Championship runs, the 2014 win. As Al Michaels jokes in the replay, “What’s your career highlight?”. This is absolutely a career highlight. It’s a league highlight. His teammates celebrated like he just won the game. The crowd is yelling like it’s a playoff victory.

With the new kickoff rules, this sort of result is now off the table. We witnessed greatness we shall never see again. Just another reason to remember it.