Poo Your Job
Big ups to the guy who gave it this name in my comments on Monday. I don’t know what the play will be remembered as, but I think this is the funniest answer I saw so I’m making sure to memorialize it.
The Hail Moron, Stiff Six, Mac Truck, …the Jakobi Meyers brainfart that occurred on Sunday was the single dumbest play I’ve seen since, well probably the Colts attempt to fake a punt that went very wrong. It’s up there in the top ten dumbest plays in NFL history, imo. If it happened in the second quarter, it would still belong here, but wouldn’t be top ten. The fact that the play won the Raiders the game, a game that was going to overtime otherwise…is magic. If the Patriots miss the playoffs by one game (please let this happen), this becomes the most important play of the entire season.
What a mistake. What an absolute mistake, by the team we’ve been trained to never make these sorts of errors. This is New York Jets territory. This is Washington style. Hell, this is some Raiders shit. The end of regulation lateral desperation is nothing new. But the Patriots weren’t losing. The game was tied. This was not necessary in any way. Most teams don’t even try to score in this situation but just take the knee and prep for overtime. The Patriots certainly weren’t trying to score. The first mistake was trying to run the ball at all. The runner ended up getting further into the secondary than he probably expected and it got into his head so he chucked the ball to Jakobi Meyers. Stupid. Very stupid. The fact that he didn’t go down but dumped a lame-duck lateral to begin with has honestly been overshadowed by what happened next, but we need to emphasize that the lateral was pointless and stupid. The second mistake in a rapidly cascading pile of failure. The third mistake was Jakobi Meyers basically sprinting 15 yards backward, not even sideways, looking for a lateral target. He didn’t try to find a lane and give up, he just straight up started running the wrong way openly looking to lateral. The 4th mistake was the big one. He threw it to Mac Jones.
Ignore for a moment the fact that the lateral was fucking across his body, across the field, and horribly off-target. What the fuck was Mac Jones even going to do with it in the first place? He had no blockers. He’s not a running QB. He can’t throw it anymore, it’s not a flea flicker. The fuck is Mac gonna do? Well, get sent to hell, apparently. Chandler Jones and Mac had pretty much given up on the play by then because…well, obviously the play should have been over. So here comes dipshit mcgee chucking a bomb directly to Chandler Jones, who managed to compose himself enough from the shock of the stupidity to catch it, turn around, and face the only obstacle between him and glory. 214lbs of soft pasty white boy. I’ve seen Mac Jones get some shit for not tackling Chandler but let’s be real, Mac was fucked. His best hope would be to trip Chandler Jones up, which he tried to do, while being stiff-armed into the upper crust of the earth’s mantle. Chandler Jones probably laughed maniacally as he sent Mac into his grave before valiantly strolling into the endzone.
Moments later, as we wiped the tears of laughter from our eyes, the reality of the situation truly sunk in. What a masterpiece. I am proud to have seen it. My Patriots fan friend flew to Vegas for the game. All he sent me afterward was “WTF did I just see”. Sir, you saw history. Absolute history.
As far as all-time greatest idiot mistakes go, it’s possibly just outside top 5. Buttfumble remains #1. The Colts Punt is probably #2. The Leon Lett Miami mistake is probably #3. I think this play has an argument for #4, mostly because it activley lost the game for the Patriots. Plays like the Wrong Way Run or the DJAX drop or the Leon Lett Bills fumble happened in games where the team still won. The Dan Orlovsky safety ended up being the difference in a 12-10 loss, but it happened in the first quarter with the game at 0-0. The Miracle at the Meadowlands was more or less caused by teams not having yet normalized the victory formation. Swinging Gate was Jim Zorn giving Dan Snyder the finger. This play straight-up lost the Patriots a game they could have won, and may cost them a playoff spot.
The Patriots sit at 7-7, in the 8th seed. In front of them are the Dolphins, at 8-6, the Chargers, at 8-6, and the 9-5 Ravens. All 3 teams have an arguably easier schedule than the Patriots do. If the Patriots end up one game out, we can all bring up this replay and laugh about it even harder as an encore.
Nothing for Yepremian’s blocked kick-pass-pick six?
I think the Colts has to be number one, because it was planned, not a bad reaction in the heat of the moment.
In terms of pure “this is a bad idea executed worsely”, definitely.
The Buttfumble, however, involves a butt. This makes it inherently more powerful. On overall metrics, thus, that pushes it over the top.
The Colts play wasn’t even supposed to be snapped, they were trying to draw them offsides with a weird formation. The center had a colossal brainfart by actually snapping the ball, but I don’t think that really counts as “planned.”
If Belichick retires after this season, I’d like to think this play sent him away from the sidelines.
I saw someone on reddit refer to this play as “Lateral Damage” and that’s what my monkey brain calls it.
The Lateral Six.
Cool! I got some big ups from DP Dave! Christmas will be a letdown now lol
Not sure if you caught SVP’s telestrator breakdown of the play, but it was classic — circling players and coaches on the Patriot’s sidelines looking aghast/appalled/disgusted as it unfolded. As one Patriot slammed his helmet to the ground during the runback SVP deadpanned “and this guy’s taking off his helmet as he knows he won’t need it anymore…”
I have to disagree about this play only being #4 just due to the circumstances surrounding the play and the overall impact it will likely have on the Patriots’ season. They were already a longshot to make the playoffs as it stood given their final three games, so this game was an absolute must-win to afford just a bit of breathing room going into a brutal stretch to close their season. That alone puts it on top of just about every game it’s competing with. It is by far the single stupidest and most unnecessary loss I have ever seen as a fan of football, and will likely be the catalyst to an epic collapse to close out what has been an extremely frustrating season for a disappointing team.
I remember watching the end of that Michigan State-Michigan game back in 2015 (for you non-CFB watchers, behold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqv48MwEbaQ) and thinking, “This is it. This is, without question, the stupidest way I have ever seen a team lose a game of football ever. Nothing will ever top this. ” 7 years later, I stand very much corrected. At least Michigan could argue that they *had* to run some type of play in that situation. The Patriots have no excuse. They could have done literally anything else, but they decided to pull… whatever the fuck that was.
The other three plays you mentioned might be very stupid, but none of them had the stakes that this play was carrying. If these are the post-Brady Patriots, I think I want off this ride.
The thing about the ButtFumble that many people forget is that it was just part of a string of stuff that happened to the Jets in that game in (literally) a single minute of play. Sure, it was far-and-away the most notable and most hilarious, and it happened on Thanksgiving so everyone was watching it, but it was merely the *second* of 3 straight fumbles by the Jets. (All of which were turned into TDs by the Patriots, who went from 7-0 just after the 2nd quarter started to 28-0 while there was still 10 minutes left in the half.)
[Dave, that sequence of events would probably make a good offseason Laterals comic.]
So I’d actually put the La-duh-ral as #1, simply because of the game situation at the time.
Gota disagree with you there for once Dave, the Buttfumble might be the uncontested #1 spot on the list of embarassing plays but its not the most idiotic by a long shot. Hell, it would never have happened if “Whales Monthly” contributor and absolute unit of a human being Vince Wilfork didnt straight up yeet a grown-ass lineman butt first into his QB and the picture you took to illustrate the play even shows as much. Shame on you Dave 😉 (and also thanks for the extra Kirk uhhhh…”cleaning his buisness” picture from last week to commemorate the historical Colts ooopsies)
“stiff-armed into the upper crust of the earth’s mantle” made me laugh so hard because it’s so fucking true.
In my group of football friends I was the only one who witness that amazing atrocity live cause they all didn’t pay attention to it for rather understandable reasons. Telling them about it felt great
So should we expect anything about Franco Harris passing away and the immaculate reception’s 50th next week or are you saving that for the off season?
Chandler Jones for HOF!
This play was indeed a work of football art. F-art, if you will.
I really enjoy that some of the artworks are photos and others are styled like paintings
“Poo your job”. Just awesome! As a Pats fan, you could imagine how much swearing I did during and after that stupid play. Also, forgot about “Cousin kneels”. Missing there, Brady’s Third Down!
As a Pats fan it’s just so perfectly emblematic of the 2022 Pats experience, which has a lot of “this would be a good idea if you did it at the right time but you didn’t so it’s dumb”. Mac Jones calls out the coaches for being too conservative – true! – after a game where injury turned his offensive line into a turnstile. Like bro what do you think was gonna happen? If the coaches took your advice you’d still have lost and you’d be in traction. And so the coaching staff responds to this criticism by calling the boldest play they can think of, and here we are.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/JdkdS_7sz8352fwHt6oKGIMoiUk=/1600×0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4212839/lolphinz.0.gif Tannehill getting hiked to by mistake doesn’t deserve to be on this list because he recovered the ball himself so it wasn’t an epic disaster. But I will NEVER pass up an opportunity to share this, my favorite football face
In light of the Phillyeagles loss to the Cowboys, I am waiting for another completely objective and unbiased comic about the Eagles.
The DJax drop unfortunately didn’t happen on a game the Eagles still won. But as far as blunders go, this one was fairly inconsequential, as the Eagles scored a TD on the next play or two. Much worse was the Ronnie Brown lateral attempt at goal line against the Niners. It resulted in a turnover when the game was 10-3 for the Eagles and they ended up losing that day by 1 point.
Personally, I’m a big fan of Lateral Damage
watched the play on youtube and as horrible as the well-told story was by dpd, seeing is somehow still orders of magnitude worse
layers upon layers upon layers of WHY
Side note: As a Patriots fan who is rooting for them to miss the playoffs (there’s like zero chance they’d do anything worthwhile, and they desperately need the better draft picks they get from missing, plus missing makes it even more likely they fire Matt Patricia) – it would bring me endless glee to know that the people irrationally hating on the Patriots would be celebrating something we’re actually happy with. (To paraphrase Emo Phillips – there are plenty of GOOD reasons to hate the Patriots, but they aren’t the ones you hear cited most often)
I personally think this play would go higher on the list if the Patriots had been winning at the time. The fact that it was tied and was about to go to overtime makes it jaw-droppingly dumb to have made a “desperation play” kind of move, but in the NFL, there’s still a pretty good chance you lose in overtime if you lose the coin toss – especially if you’re offense is poo and called by a defensive coordinator who wasn’t even great in that role. So while it’s super dumb, the schadenfreude would be so much higher if it had ACTUALLY cost them a game they were otherwise winning, instead of just taking away the right to play for the win in overtime.