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The quarterback meetings always started the same, and the routine included mild frustration.
D’Eriq King, at the time just a sophomore at Manvel High School, located in the suburban Texas city south of Houston, arrived promptly just after seventh period, the final class of the day. He saw his head coach Kirk Martin, who would direct the discussions. Then King looked over, and, yes, he was already there, too.
This guy? Again?
There was another sophomore quarterback, someone who made sure he showed up before King. He’d usually get to the meeting room only two or three minutes earlier. At most, five. But King noticed, and after a handful of days, that was enough. Something had to change. Maybe King would leave class just a minute earlier. No longer could King accept the other quarterback continuing to be first.
That other quarterback was Kyle Trask.
“Kyle is the reason, he kind of pushed me,” King told The Athletic. ”I kind of got a work ethic from him as far as, like, in the weight room, being early to practice, being early to film and just dialing in. He pushed me in the right direction.”
Just the other day, King shared those words about Trask with some of his teammates at Houston. The message: The Cougars’ starting quarterback works so hard now because his backup in high school worked harder five years ago. The context: Finally, after spending nearly seven years as a backup, this is Trask’s time.
Trask has received limited snaps at Florida backing up Feleipe Franks. (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
Trask is expected to start Saturday for Florida against Tennessee in The Swamp. After Feleipe Franks suffered a dislocated and fractured ankle in the third quarter of Florida’s game last Saturday with the Gators trailing Kentucky by 11 points, Trask entered and steered an improbable come-from-behind win. Trask hasn’t started a game since he was a freshman in high school.
“If you’re going to do a movie, this is movie material,” Manvel resident and 7-on-7 volunteer coach Ryan Middleton said. “It really, really is. His story is unbelievable. It doesn’t happen like this all the time.”
Trask was raised in Manvel. The clichéd image of a football being thrown through a tire hanging from a tree in the backyard of a Texas home applies; Trask and his older brother, Hayden, spent days doing just that. He played little league ball in Manvel. He went to the neighborhood junior high school, and in the eighth grade, he was voted male athlete of the year.
“Just him growing up in Manvel,” King said, “he always wanted to be a Manvel starting quarterback.”
Reality didn’t cooperate with that dream. King, now regarded as one of the best quarterbacks in the country, was Manvel’s starting quarterback from 2013-15. As a dual-threat, King was the better fit for the Mavericks’ spread offense. Trask, a traditional pro-style passer, was the backup. Manvel went 36-6 during those three years. Only four of those games were decided by seven or fewer points. Usually, Manvel racked up points in a hurry. King would be done at halftime, he said, and the second half would belong to Trask.
Trask was worth sticking around for. He averaged 15.4 yards per attempt after 161 throws in high school, according to Middleton, who watched the games from a booth upstairs as the school’s stat keeper. Trask threw 17 touchdowns. He never threw an interception.
“Everybody knew he had all the intangibles,” Middleton said. “We saw it in practice during the 7-on-7 every day. He could make all the throws. He had great feet. And the good thing was that he was so coachable. I can’t express how he was when he was a Manvel Maverick. He could’ve played for any other program in the state of Texas.”
Some people close to Trask would remind him of that. Leave, show everyone how great you can be somewhere else, they would say. Trask preferred to stay where he still looked great, just in an unusual way.
“Nobody on my high school team thought of him as a backup,” King said. “He was just one of the guys, one of the starters. It was kind of like 1A, 1B.”
Not just because Trask produced. He worked. Man, did Trask work.
Houston QB D’Eriq King started ahead of Trask at Manvel High School. (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
At Manvel, when the quarterbacks lifted together in a group, it was Trask who stood out. During meetings, Trask asked questions as if he was the starter. He thought of the approach as a responsibility; team-first, that’s how Trask was.
“Me watching how hard he worked kind of made me want to go hard,” King said. “I thought I worked pretty hard at first. And then I watched him work and I was like, ‘Wow, I got to do a lot more.’
“Me and Kyle were very competitive with each other, but in a good way where we were still close. We still have a good friendship. But we were competitive on and off the field. I tried to be the first one to practice, and so did he.”
Manvel’s motto is “Hoka Hey.” Martin introduced the phrase to the school and it has stuck even though he is now Syracuse’s quarterbacks coach. Hoka Hey is on the jerseys of Manvel’s athletic teams in all sports. At the school, the two words are featured in banners and signs, on the bulletin boards in hallways, on the fences surrounding fields. They hang from signs on the walls inside the homes of Manvel residents.
Hoka Hey derives from the 19th century. It was the war leader Crazy Horse’s battle cry at Little Bighorn when his Sioux Lakota Indian tribe defeated General Custer. To Crazy Horse, Hoka Hey meant, “This is a great day to die.” Death was deemed a noble, perhaps necessary, sacrifice, if that’s what it took to preserve a way of life. Obviously, Manvel doesn’t translate the meaning literally. From the community’s perspective, the point in adopting the term is to influence and encourage unselfish behavior.
Every year, the high school football coaching staff votes on the “Hoka Hey” award.
In 2015, Trask was chosen.
“It’s the pinnacle of an award at Manvel,” Middleton said. “He deserved it. He was everything you asked him to do.”
”Kyle stayed with us,” former Manvel assistant and current Shadow Creek head coach Brad Butler said. “He was playing behind a kid who was an All-American, but Kyle was pretty good, too. The whole coaching staff just appreciated what he meant to this community and what he meant to the school to stick it out. He could have gone anywhere in the state of Texas and been a starting quarterback in high school, but he loved Manvel, just like how he loves the Florida Gators. Honestly, he graduated and he could’ve transferred anywhere he wanted to transfer. But he’s that type of kid. He is going to stick it out.”
Trask committing to Florida in July 2015 was unusual. Backup quarterbacks aren’t typically recruited as potential starters for SEC programs. For a while, Trask was no different. The 247Sports Composite rated Trask as a two-star at the time of his commitment (he would later become a low three-star). His only other offers were from Houston Baptist, McNeese State and Lamar — all FCS schools. When he committed, former Florida offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier told Trask the Gators intended to take two quarterbacks in his class. Trask didn’t mind. A few months later, Franks joined Florida’s 2016 recruiting class.
But Florida wanted Trask, too. Nussmeier noticed Trask during the evaluation period and invited the quarterback to camp, where he threw twice for the Gators coaching staff. Nussmeier and former head coach Jim McElwain weren’t turned off by Trask not starting in high school. Instead, Trask staying at Manvel and working the way he did despite the circumstances, McElwain recently said, was “one of the things that truly kind of attracted us to him.”
“I always had total confidence in Kyle,” McElwain said, “and I know he’s going to make the most of his opportunity.”
Those in Manvel believe the same. A message group on Facebook comprising of Manvel residents exists to keep track of former Mavericks now playing professionally or collegiately. Late Saturday night, phones began buzzing with more frequency. Someone wrote, “Hey, Kyle Trask is in the game, guys.” Televisions were turned on. Channels were switched.
The decisive, accurate throws after taking the snap. The assertiveness on the sideline and in huddles. The smart decision-making. The win. They saw it all. They weren’t surprised. They had seen it before.
“Kyle,” Middleton said, “is special.”
Trask paced between the elevators on the third floor of the press deck inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Monday was different. Being Florida’s starting quarterback means addressing the media every Monday afternoon. When you have a story like Trask’s, it also means fielding questions from an out-of-town reporter over the phone just before taking a podium, too. Speaker phone on, Trask walked back and forth as he answered questions. The inquiries were sometimes longer than the replies.
“In the media, he’ll probably keep it short and sweet, but in the locker room, he’s a totally different guy,” King said. “When he opens up to guys and gets comfortable with a group of guys, he’ll be totally different. He’s kind of funny, to be honest. He’s a jokester. He’s always sarcastic.”
When the phone call ended, one of Florida’s sports communication directors asked Trask how it went. “Good,” he said. “Easy.”
Like in high school, Trask has always prepared at Florida as if he was the starter. That’s how he was able to perform at such a high level against Kentucky. His strengths on the field are clear: He throws a good ball with good technique, and he has good pocket presence and awareness. He is not going to be a dynamic runner, but he’s physical. At least, that is as much as can be surmised from limited action for Trask.
Trask led Florida to a 29-21 comeback win at Kentucky. (Mark Zerof / USA Today)
“I think he’s going to prove a lot of people wrong if they are doubting him,” King said. “He’s a great player, and I’ve been knowing that since I was 15.”
What remains curious is how Trask — and Emory Jones, for that matter — will handle the off-the-field part of being Florida’s quarterback.
“Honestly,” Mullen said Monday behind a podium in front of a room full of reporters, “it’s being in rooms like this that’s the biggest change for them.”
Trask is a soft-talker with reporters. He stood Monday with a neat fade and perfectly trimmed, light, unconnected goatee. Trask can be laconic, spare with his words and emotion. He stood with the slight slouch of an understated yet supremely confident man.
“He’ll handle it really well, and I’ve known Kyle for a long time. He’s so well-rounded, laid-back and chill,” King said. “Kyle is a great dude, and I’m excited for him and this moment right now. He’s been waiting for it for a long time.”
Now, opportunity is here, and it is all so new. In an alternate reality, the moment may have already happened. Two days before the 2017 opener with Michigan, Trask got rolled up on at practice and required a procedure on his foot that would sideline him the rest of the season. Instead of a seesaw season Franks experienced between starts and benchings, would Trask have been the Gators starter for at least the last couple of games in 2017? What about last year? Franks was benched during the Missouri game. Trask stepped in and played well. Then in the week of practice leading up to the next game, Trask broke his foot. Would he have otherwise started?
“That was kind of a day-by-day thing,” Trask said Monday. “My whole focus in that week was just to try to ball out every day in practice. I knew, obviously, it’s in the coaches’ hands and there’s nothing I can do about it other than do the best that I can do for the team.”
He had a similar answer when he was asked about a conversation he had with Mullen, with the head coach asking him during a player-exit meeting after last season “where his head was at.”
“It was going into my redshirt junior season and he’s asking me where my head’s at because the transfer portal is a big thing,” Trask said. “I told him I was 100 percent a Gator. I’m going to be ready when my number gets called.”
And the gist was the same when he was asked about Jones, the only quarterback on the roster Mullen recruited. Mullen said both Trask and Jones will play. Jones is more of a dynamic runner and will likely see packages and plenty of action. Part of that could be to boost Florida’s run game, which is off to a slow start. Part of that is because Jones, a redshirt freshman who was nearly a five-star prospect in high school, is thought of as the future at the position for the Gators. Trask was asked how he thought the two-quarterback dynamic would work.
“We’re here to do what’s best for the team,” Trask said. “Whatever we need to do, we’ll do whatever the coaches ask. When our numbers are called, I’m sure we’ll produce.”
Maybe they both will split time gracefully and successfully. Maybe Jones will emerge as the Gators’ starting quarterback. Maybe Trask will play well enough to keep the job to himself. Maybe one will struggle. Maybe both. Who knows. Trask doesn’t need certainty to operate. He never has. The only thing clear was this is his moment, and after waiting so long for it, he is ready.
Seconds before Trask took the podium, he glanced at his phone one last time. It had been buzzing since Saturday night. He received hundreds of messages. One was simple yet emphatic. It was from King, who sent a text during the game. It just read, “Let’s go!!!”
D’Eriq King, at the time just a sophomore at Manvel High School, located in the suburban Texas city south of Houston, arrived promptly just after seventh period, the final class of the day. He saw his head coach Kirk Martin, who would direct the discussions. Then King looked over, and, yes, he was already there, too.
This guy? Again?
There was another sophomore quarterback, someone who made sure he showed up before King. He’d usually get to the meeting room only two or three minutes earlier. At most, five. But King noticed, and after a handful of days, that was enough. Something had to change. Maybe King would leave class just a minute earlier. No longer could King accept the other quarterback continuing to be first.
That other quarterback was Kyle Trask.
“Kyle is the reason, he kind of pushed me,” King told The Athletic. ”I kind of got a work ethic from him as far as, like, in the weight room, being early to practice, being early to film and just dialing in. He pushed me in the right direction.”
Just the other day, King shared those words about Trask with some of his teammates at Houston. The message: The Cougars’ starting quarterback works so hard now because his backup in high school worked harder five years ago. The context: Finally, after spending nearly seven years as a backup, this is Trask’s time.
Trask has received limited snaps at Florida backing up Feleipe Franks. (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
Trask is expected to start Saturday for Florida against Tennessee in The Swamp. After Feleipe Franks suffered a dislocated and fractured ankle in the third quarter of Florida’s game last Saturday with the Gators trailing Kentucky by 11 points, Trask entered and steered an improbable come-from-behind win. Trask hasn’t started a game since he was a freshman in high school.
“If you’re going to do a movie, this is movie material,” Manvel resident and 7-on-7 volunteer coach Ryan Middleton said. “It really, really is. His story is unbelievable. It doesn’t happen like this all the time.”
Trask was raised in Manvel. The clichéd image of a football being thrown through a tire hanging from a tree in the backyard of a Texas home applies; Trask and his older brother, Hayden, spent days doing just that. He played little league ball in Manvel. He went to the neighborhood junior high school, and in the eighth grade, he was voted male athlete of the year.
“Just him growing up in Manvel,” King said, “he always wanted to be a Manvel starting quarterback.”
Reality didn’t cooperate with that dream. King, now regarded as one of the best quarterbacks in the country, was Manvel’s starting quarterback from 2013-15. As a dual-threat, King was the better fit for the Mavericks’ spread offense. Trask, a traditional pro-style passer, was the backup. Manvel went 36-6 during those three years. Only four of those games were decided by seven or fewer points. Usually, Manvel racked up points in a hurry. King would be done at halftime, he said, and the second half would belong to Trask.
Trask was worth sticking around for. He averaged 15.4 yards per attempt after 161 throws in high school, according to Middleton, who watched the games from a booth upstairs as the school’s stat keeper. Trask threw 17 touchdowns. He never threw an interception.
“Everybody knew he had all the intangibles,” Middleton said. “We saw it in practice during the 7-on-7 every day. He could make all the throws. He had great feet. And the good thing was that he was so coachable. I can’t express how he was when he was a Manvel Maverick. He could’ve played for any other program in the state of Texas.”
Some people close to Trask would remind him of that. Leave, show everyone how great you can be somewhere else, they would say. Trask preferred to stay where he still looked great, just in an unusual way.
“Nobody on my high school team thought of him as a backup,” King said. “He was just one of the guys, one of the starters. It was kind of like 1A, 1B.”
Not just because Trask produced. He worked. Man, did Trask work.
Houston QB D’Eriq King started ahead of Trask at Manvel High School. (Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)
At Manvel, when the quarterbacks lifted together in a group, it was Trask who stood out. During meetings, Trask asked questions as if he was the starter. He thought of the approach as a responsibility; team-first, that’s how Trask was.
“Me watching how hard he worked kind of made me want to go hard,” King said. “I thought I worked pretty hard at first. And then I watched him work and I was like, ‘Wow, I got to do a lot more.’
“Me and Kyle were very competitive with each other, but in a good way where we were still close. We still have a good friendship. But we were competitive on and off the field. I tried to be the first one to practice, and so did he.”
Manvel’s motto is “Hoka Hey.” Martin introduced the phrase to the school and it has stuck even though he is now Syracuse’s quarterbacks coach. Hoka Hey is on the jerseys of Manvel’s athletic teams in all sports. At the school, the two words are featured in banners and signs, on the bulletin boards in hallways, on the fences surrounding fields. They hang from signs on the walls inside the homes of Manvel residents.
Hoka Hey derives from the 19th century. It was the war leader Crazy Horse’s battle cry at Little Bighorn when his Sioux Lakota Indian tribe defeated General Custer. To Crazy Horse, Hoka Hey meant, “This is a great day to die.” Death was deemed a noble, perhaps necessary, sacrifice, if that’s what it took to preserve a way of life. Obviously, Manvel doesn’t translate the meaning literally. From the community’s perspective, the point in adopting the term is to influence and encourage unselfish behavior.
Every year, the high school football coaching staff votes on the “Hoka Hey” award.
In 2015, Trask was chosen.
“It’s the pinnacle of an award at Manvel,” Middleton said. “He deserved it. He was everything you asked him to do.”
”Kyle stayed with us,” former Manvel assistant and current Shadow Creek head coach Brad Butler said. “He was playing behind a kid who was an All-American, but Kyle was pretty good, too. The whole coaching staff just appreciated what he meant to this community and what he meant to the school to stick it out. He could have gone anywhere in the state of Texas and been a starting quarterback in high school, but he loved Manvel, just like how he loves the Florida Gators. Honestly, he graduated and he could’ve transferred anywhere he wanted to transfer. But he’s that type of kid. He is going to stick it out.”
Trask committing to Florida in July 2015 was unusual. Backup quarterbacks aren’t typically recruited as potential starters for SEC programs. For a while, Trask was no different. The 247Sports Composite rated Trask as a two-star at the time of his commitment (he would later become a low three-star). His only other offers were from Houston Baptist, McNeese State and Lamar — all FCS schools. When he committed, former Florida offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier told Trask the Gators intended to take two quarterbacks in his class. Trask didn’t mind. A few months later, Franks joined Florida’s 2016 recruiting class.
But Florida wanted Trask, too. Nussmeier noticed Trask during the evaluation period and invited the quarterback to camp, where he threw twice for the Gators coaching staff. Nussmeier and former head coach Jim McElwain weren’t turned off by Trask not starting in high school. Instead, Trask staying at Manvel and working the way he did despite the circumstances, McElwain recently said, was “one of the things that truly kind of attracted us to him.”
“I always had total confidence in Kyle,” McElwain said, “and I know he’s going to make the most of his opportunity.”
Those in Manvel believe the same. A message group on Facebook comprising of Manvel residents exists to keep track of former Mavericks now playing professionally or collegiately. Late Saturday night, phones began buzzing with more frequency. Someone wrote, “Hey, Kyle Trask is in the game, guys.” Televisions were turned on. Channels were switched.
The decisive, accurate throws after taking the snap. The assertiveness on the sideline and in huddles. The smart decision-making. The win. They saw it all. They weren’t surprised. They had seen it before.
“Kyle,” Middleton said, “is special.”
Trask paced between the elevators on the third floor of the press deck inside Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Monday was different. Being Florida’s starting quarterback means addressing the media every Monday afternoon. When you have a story like Trask’s, it also means fielding questions from an out-of-town reporter over the phone just before taking a podium, too. Speaker phone on, Trask walked back and forth as he answered questions. The inquiries were sometimes longer than the replies.
“In the media, he’ll probably keep it short and sweet, but in the locker room, he’s a totally different guy,” King said. “When he opens up to guys and gets comfortable with a group of guys, he’ll be totally different. He’s kind of funny, to be honest. He’s a jokester. He’s always sarcastic.”
When the phone call ended, one of Florida’s sports communication directors asked Trask how it went. “Good,” he said. “Easy.”
Like in high school, Trask has always prepared at Florida as if he was the starter. That’s how he was able to perform at such a high level against Kentucky. His strengths on the field are clear: He throws a good ball with good technique, and he has good pocket presence and awareness. He is not going to be a dynamic runner, but he’s physical. At least, that is as much as can be surmised from limited action for Trask.
Trask led Florida to a 29-21 comeback win at Kentucky. (Mark Zerof / USA Today)
“I think he’s going to prove a lot of people wrong if they are doubting him,” King said. “He’s a great player, and I’ve been knowing that since I was 15.”
What remains curious is how Trask — and Emory Jones, for that matter — will handle the off-the-field part of being Florida’s quarterback.
“Honestly,” Mullen said Monday behind a podium in front of a room full of reporters, “it’s being in rooms like this that’s the biggest change for them.”
Trask is a soft-talker with reporters. He stood Monday with a neat fade and perfectly trimmed, light, unconnected goatee. Trask can be laconic, spare with his words and emotion. He stood with the slight slouch of an understated yet supremely confident man.
“He’ll handle it really well, and I’ve known Kyle for a long time. He’s so well-rounded, laid-back and chill,” King said. “Kyle is a great dude, and I’m excited for him and this moment right now. He’s been waiting for it for a long time.”
Now, opportunity is here, and it is all so new. In an alternate reality, the moment may have already happened. Two days before the 2017 opener with Michigan, Trask got rolled up on at practice and required a procedure on his foot that would sideline him the rest of the season. Instead of a seesaw season Franks experienced between starts and benchings, would Trask have been the Gators starter for at least the last couple of games in 2017? What about last year? Franks was benched during the Missouri game. Trask stepped in and played well. Then in the week of practice leading up to the next game, Trask broke his foot. Would he have otherwise started?
“That was kind of a day-by-day thing,” Trask said Monday. “My whole focus in that week was just to try to ball out every day in practice. I knew, obviously, it’s in the coaches’ hands and there’s nothing I can do about it other than do the best that I can do for the team.”
He had a similar answer when he was asked about a conversation he had with Mullen, with the head coach asking him during a player-exit meeting after last season “where his head was at.”
“It was going into my redshirt junior season and he’s asking me where my head’s at because the transfer portal is a big thing,” Trask said. “I told him I was 100 percent a Gator. I’m going to be ready when my number gets called.”
And the gist was the same when he was asked about Jones, the only quarterback on the roster Mullen recruited. Mullen said both Trask and Jones will play. Jones is more of a dynamic runner and will likely see packages and plenty of action. Part of that could be to boost Florida’s run game, which is off to a slow start. Part of that is because Jones, a redshirt freshman who was nearly a five-star prospect in high school, is thought of as the future at the position for the Gators. Trask was asked how he thought the two-quarterback dynamic would work.
“We’re here to do what’s best for the team,” Trask said. “Whatever we need to do, we’ll do whatever the coaches ask. When our numbers are called, I’m sure we’ll produce.”
Maybe they both will split time gracefully and successfully. Maybe Jones will emerge as the Gators’ starting quarterback. Maybe Trask will play well enough to keep the job to himself. Maybe one will struggle. Maybe both. Who knows. Trask doesn’t need certainty to operate. He never has. The only thing clear was this is his moment, and after waiting so long for it, he is ready.
Seconds before Trask took the podium, he glanced at his phone one last time. It had been buzzing since Saturday night. He received hundreds of messages. One was simple yet emphatic. It was from King, who sent a text during the game. It just read, “Let’s go!!!”
G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman
Logic Is Absent Wherever Hate Is Present
NEWPORT BEACH — This time, his Game 6 performance wasn’t magic. It wasn’t random or coincidental. He didn’t just so happen to get hot at the right time.
No, in Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals, Klay Thompson crafted those heroics. He didn’t find the zone, he summoned it. With his team facing elimination, with Kevin Durant done after tearing his Achilles the previous game, with the Raptors checking Stephen Curry like they were TSA, the Warriors needed Thompson to be great. And he was.
This was different than his past feats. Thompson imposed his will in a way even he noticed was a level up.
“I felt like the best version I’ve ever felt of myself in that NBA Finals,” Thompson said Thursday. “I kid you not.”
Thompson was sitting on a couch, leaning over to sign a pair of his Anta sneakers, when he paused to think. The Sharpie stopped moving as he looked away from the shoes to stare into nowhere. He was in his bungalow overlooking the Pelican Hill Golf Club, on the porch of the Pacific Ocean.
His room was crowded with people and chatter. Public-relations people. Security. Friends from college. A film crew. His father. All engines were revved as they prepared to head down the scenic hill to the kickoff of his charity golf event. But Klay was suddenly still, quiet.
He was remembering.
“I think about that every day,” Thompson said. He sat straight up and shook his head. “That’s just the humbling part of sports — when you feel like you’re at your best, something traumatic can happen. But I honestly felt like I was at the peak of my NBA career up to that point. I was at my best. The way I was shooting the ball, the way I was playing defense. I felt like I was one of the best players out there. In past series, or Finals, you know, I’ve been able to defer. But in that series, I felt like I was just, like, as close to unstoppable as I’ve ever been.”
No doubt, he had some big games in the Finals before: 34 points in Game 2 of 2015; 37 in Game 5 of 2016; 30 in Game 3 of 2017. But he was nearly as likely to have a dud.
At least twice in each of the Warriors’ first four NBA Finals appearances, Thompson scored 11 points or fewer.
Oh, but he was a different player this past June. Thrust into a premier role without Durant, Thompson was premier every game.
He never scored fewer than 21 points, averaging a career-best 26.0 points in the 2019 NBA Finals. He sprained his ankle in Game 2, missed Game 3 and came back even better the next three games despite being hobbled. He made 24 of 43 from 3 — a ridiculous 58.5 percent — in the series. He scored 30 points in 32 minutes in Game 6, and was set up for a big finish.
Remember that 3-pointer in transition, with 5:19 left in the third quarter, tying the game? Oracle Arena belonged to Thompson. The Warriors belonged to Thompson. It felt like the series might have, too. He was a superstar reaching peak brightness.
This revelation is a blessing and a curse as Thompson recovers from the ACL tear he suffered late in the third quarter of that fateful game, which ended up as Toronto’s title-clinching moment. He has tasted his pinnacle. After eight seasons of climbing, he poked through the ceiling of his game and inhaled the rarified air.
Knowing he has another level makes him so determined to overcome this injury. He has to get back that high he felt. He knows what’s waiting for him on the other side of this. The Warriors signed him to a five-year, $190-million max contract, banking on him getting back to that level.
When the Warriors had Durant, Thompson was a thermometer. He had to read the room, rise up or fall back based on Curry and Durant. And you could always tell how well the Warriors were clicking by Thompson’s play and how he was getting his shots. Moving forward, though, they need him to become a thermostat: He needs to regulate. When he returns, the Warriors need him to be greater than he’s ever been.
And Thompson never looked more ready to be that type of player than he did in the Finals.
Of course, knowing he reached another level is what makes tearing his ACL so dejecting. How could this happen right when he finally arrived?
Miles Morales didn’t hone his super powers to sit out the fight. Neo didn’t realize he was The One only to live in the Matrix. Bruce Leroy didn’t get the glow to lose it. Thompson had finally found his basketball zenith only to have it taken away.
“My mindset, though, I’m still in like the grassroots stages of rehab,” Thompson explained. “So it’s, like, hard to envision even, like, running. I’ll watch games on Hardwood Classic and it’s like, ‘Damn. I was able to do that?’ because of my knee right now. But I’ll get back. I’ll be even better. I really believe that. I’ve never been more motivated.”
Thompson was in this four-figures-a-night Ocean King Suite because he was the star of the show. Last Thursday night was the welcome party for the Thompson Family Foundation Celebrity Golf Tournament. The red carpet gala on the course — which included dinner, auctions and a live performance by Aloe Blacc of “I’m the man, I’m the man, I’m the man” fame — kicked off the second annual charity event. The operation humming around Thompson was because of him, waiting for him. But his energy contrasted the bustle going on. His button-up shirt, freshly pressed, was unfastened at the sleeves. The shoes he was planning to wear over his Stance socks were noticeably absent.
Rocco, Thompson’s beloved bulldog, got up from his chill spot on the carpet, right by the TV. He strolled slowly over to Thompson, around the glass table and under his master’s legs. While staring between thoughts, Thompson glided his hand along Rocco’s back as he passed through on his way to the balcony.
Still Klay, peaceful Klay, is a different vibe.
This time of year, Thompson is usually being celebrated for providing social media moments that allow fans to live vicariously through him. In previous years, he created a sensation with way he enjoyed life, the way he attacked pleasure, the way his comfort in his own skin served as a forcefield. His life from afar looked so epic. But this summer has taken on a different tone. The highlights have been a more simple beauty: date nights in foreign countries with his girlfriend, actress and model Laura Harrier. A major injury will do that to a baller.
The worst part hasn’t even come yet. Thompson knows it.
“Honestly, we’ll see in two weeks when I see my teammates out there playing,” Thompson said of the difficulty of rehab. “But, as of right now, it’s easy to lock in and focus on my rehab every day because that’s all I have. I don’t have games. I don’t have to go to the arena. But when that starts, I know it’s going to be a very tough challenge. It’s going to be really hard.”
Thompson has been studying ACL recovery. His findings are humbling. He can rattle off how long it took other athletes.
Zach Lavine. “He took 11-and-a-half months.”
Tom Brady. “He was out a whole year.”
Danilo Gallinari. “He was out a year.”
Adrian Peterson. “What Adrian Peterson did I have an appreciation for. Nine months?That’s unbelievable to come back that quick. That is crazy. That is incredible what he did.”
Thompson said he’s about a month away from jogging. Currently, he can take set shots. He can dribble. The patience part is hard. Thompson doesn’t miss games. Over his eight seasons, he avoided major injury. He was a marvel in his locker room for playing through injuries that would leave many players in a body cast. Game 3 against the Raptors was his first-ever missed playoff game. But this ACL, man, it has robbed him of that invincible feeling. He isn’t even thinking about coming back early. He scoffs at the notion he will bounce back from this like he did most everything else.
You know what else it’s done? Put his Game 6 in new light.
Thompson has scored an NBA-record 37 points in a quarter before. In 2016 he saved the Warriors’ season with an NBA-record 11 3s, in an elimination game on the road in Oklahoma City. He once scored 60 points in 29 minutes.
His new greatest accomplishment? A pair of free throws with 2:22 left in the third quarter of Game 6 in the 2019 NBA Finals.
Something clicked for Thompson in the Finals. Even now, he can hardly articulate why. He just knows his confidence was at an all-time high. It didn’t make too much sense. Thompson hadn’t ever been lights out in the Finals. He was coming off a mediocre-by-his-standards Western Conference finals in the sweep over Portland. He was incredible on defense against Damian Lillard, helping hold the Blazers All-Star to 22.3 points on 37 percent shooting. But offensively, Thompson was cold with his shot. He totaled 86 points on 86 shots in the series. He was 11 of 32 from 3.
So why was he so confident in the Finals?
Something about matching up with Kawhi Leonard. The then-Raptors star was having a legendary postseason. And without Durant (who missed the first four Finals games with a quad injury and then suffered the Achilles injury in Game 5), Leonard was going to be Thompson’s defensive assignment. The daunting task prompted Thompson to dig deeper. He gave himself a pep talk, convincing himself he was on that level.
“Kawhi is one of the best players in the world,” Thompson said. “Man, we were in the same pre-draft workouts eight years ago, going toe-to-toe, like, battling — 1-on-1 drills, 3-on-3 drills. I’m like, ‘Just because it’s the NBA Finals, it’s no different. I know I can, like, hang with him.'”
It worked. It also is partly to blame for him getting hurt.
In the early stages of his recovery, Thompson would ask himself, rhetorically, why he went up for that dunk in transition. What if he just tried a reverse layup instead? But now, after getting a clear view of the big picture, he doesn’t regret trying to dunk. It was the NBA Finals. His confidence was soaring. He was trying to dunk everything.
Also, it created what he believes is his greatest moment as an NBA player.
Thompson can’t fully articulate why he went back onto the court after the injury. The NBA rule requires that any player who checks out of the game because of an injury must shoot the free throws he was awarded or else he can’t return to the game. If someone else has to shoot his free throws, he is not allowed to come back. But Thompson tore his left ACL. He was done for the game, for the series. He wasn’t coming back. He didn’t need to preserve his ability to return.
But when he was told in the hallway he had to shoot his free throws, something compelled him to go back. He hadn’t yet come to grips with his own mortality as a player.
“I knew I hurt something, but I’ve just never done an ACL or any type of ligament,” Thompson said. “I’ve never torn nothing in my life. So, when I did that, I thought it might have been a sprained knee. Maybe I’d go back … I didn’t even think about it. I just heard that I had to go shoot the free throws and I literally just turned around and walked back like it was …”
Thompson paused again. He leaned in to scribble his signature on the No. 11 of a blue Warriors jersey when he suddenly stopped before the marker hit the fabric. He stayed silent a few seconds, rummaging through his thoughts for an explanation.
“Like I had to,” he continued. “I don’t know. It was just something in me that told me to. And, I don’t know, man, it’s the Finals, you know? I don’t want to leave points on the board. Those are hard to get. So many dudes have a whole illustrious career and never even got a sniff of the Finals. I was very lucky to be in that position.
“I didn’t think it was that big of a deal after the Finals ended. But as time goes on and I watch the video and hear the roar of the crowd, I realize it’s a pretty big deal. That’s No. 1 because I think it shows people how much I care, how bad I want to be out there. It showed them that I’m all in with this basketball thing.”
After he made the free throw, he backpedaled to the defensive end.
“I was trying to stay in,” Thompson said. “Not even, like, consciously trying. Just like, my intuition. After you hit a free throw, you just jog back on defense. So I wasn’t really in deep thought or anything about like, ‘Dang this could hurt.’ I just wanted to keep playing. It was Game 6. It was the Finals.”
This moment, coming back into the game with a torn ACL, is now sentimental for Thompson. He was Willis Reed — “I wasn’t limping that bad,” he said — sending chills through Dub Nation. He loves this moment because it signifies his appreciation, the depths of which his injury has uncovered. The same guy who, as a sophomore at Washington State, left his MVP trophy from the 2009 Great Alaska Shootout at the security line in the airport because TSA wouldn’t let it through, now fully comprehends the deeper meaning of a free throw in the Finals. The same guy who trolled opponents for blaming injuries after their losses to the Warriors now showing sympathy for those who have suffered.
No, in Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals, Klay Thompson crafted those heroics. He didn’t find the zone, he summoned it. With his team facing elimination, with Kevin Durant done after tearing his Achilles the previous game, with the Raptors checking Stephen Curry like they were TSA, the Warriors needed Thompson to be great. And he was.
This was different than his past feats. Thompson imposed his will in a way even he noticed was a level up.
“I felt like the best version I’ve ever felt of myself in that NBA Finals,” Thompson said Thursday. “I kid you not.”
Thompson was sitting on a couch, leaning over to sign a pair of his Anta sneakers, when he paused to think. The Sharpie stopped moving as he looked away from the shoes to stare into nowhere. He was in his bungalow overlooking the Pelican Hill Golf Club, on the porch of the Pacific Ocean.
His room was crowded with people and chatter. Public-relations people. Security. Friends from college. A film crew. His father. All engines were revved as they prepared to head down the scenic hill to the kickoff of his charity golf event. But Klay was suddenly still, quiet.
He was remembering.
“I think about that every day,” Thompson said. He sat straight up and shook his head. “That’s just the humbling part of sports — when you feel like you’re at your best, something traumatic can happen. But I honestly felt like I was at the peak of my NBA career up to that point. I was at my best. The way I was shooting the ball, the way I was playing defense. I felt like I was one of the best players out there. In past series, or Finals, you know, I’ve been able to defer. But in that series, I felt like I was just, like, as close to unstoppable as I’ve ever been.”
No doubt, he had some big games in the Finals before: 34 points in Game 2 of 2015; 37 in Game 5 of 2016; 30 in Game 3 of 2017. But he was nearly as likely to have a dud.
At least twice in each of the Warriors’ first four NBA Finals appearances, Thompson scored 11 points or fewer.
Oh, but he was a different player this past June. Thrust into a premier role without Durant, Thompson was premier every game.
He never scored fewer than 21 points, averaging a career-best 26.0 points in the 2019 NBA Finals. He sprained his ankle in Game 2, missed Game 3 and came back even better the next three games despite being hobbled. He made 24 of 43 from 3 — a ridiculous 58.5 percent — in the series. He scored 30 points in 32 minutes in Game 6, and was set up for a big finish.
Remember that 3-pointer in transition, with 5:19 left in the third quarter, tying the game? Oracle Arena belonged to Thompson. The Warriors belonged to Thompson. It felt like the series might have, too. He was a superstar reaching peak brightness.
This revelation is a blessing and a curse as Thompson recovers from the ACL tear he suffered late in the third quarter of that fateful game, which ended up as Toronto’s title-clinching moment. He has tasted his pinnacle. After eight seasons of climbing, he poked through the ceiling of his game and inhaled the rarified air.
Knowing he has another level makes him so determined to overcome this injury. He has to get back that high he felt. He knows what’s waiting for him on the other side of this. The Warriors signed him to a five-year, $190-million max contract, banking on him getting back to that level.
When the Warriors had Durant, Thompson was a thermometer. He had to read the room, rise up or fall back based on Curry and Durant. And you could always tell how well the Warriors were clicking by Thompson’s play and how he was getting his shots. Moving forward, though, they need him to become a thermostat: He needs to regulate. When he returns, the Warriors need him to be greater than he’s ever been.
And Thompson never looked more ready to be that type of player than he did in the Finals.
Of course, knowing he reached another level is what makes tearing his ACL so dejecting. How could this happen right when he finally arrived?
Miles Morales didn’t hone his super powers to sit out the fight. Neo didn’t realize he was The One only to live in the Matrix. Bruce Leroy didn’t get the glow to lose it. Thompson had finally found his basketball zenith only to have it taken away.
“My mindset, though, I’m still in like the grassroots stages of rehab,” Thompson explained. “So it’s, like, hard to envision even, like, running. I’ll watch games on Hardwood Classic and it’s like, ‘Damn. I was able to do that?’ because of my knee right now. But I’ll get back. I’ll be even better. I really believe that. I’ve never been more motivated.”
Thompson was in this four-figures-a-night Ocean King Suite because he was the star of the show. Last Thursday night was the welcome party for the Thompson Family Foundation Celebrity Golf Tournament. The red carpet gala on the course — which included dinner, auctions and a live performance by Aloe Blacc of “I’m the man, I’m the man, I’m the man” fame — kicked off the second annual charity event. The operation humming around Thompson was because of him, waiting for him. But his energy contrasted the bustle going on. His button-up shirt, freshly pressed, was unfastened at the sleeves. The shoes he was planning to wear over his Stance socks were noticeably absent.
Rocco, Thompson’s beloved bulldog, got up from his chill spot on the carpet, right by the TV. He strolled slowly over to Thompson, around the glass table and under his master’s legs. While staring between thoughts, Thompson glided his hand along Rocco’s back as he passed through on his way to the balcony.
Still Klay, peaceful Klay, is a different vibe.
This time of year, Thompson is usually being celebrated for providing social media moments that allow fans to live vicariously through him. In previous years, he created a sensation with way he enjoyed life, the way he attacked pleasure, the way his comfort in his own skin served as a forcefield. His life from afar looked so epic. But this summer has taken on a different tone. The highlights have been a more simple beauty: date nights in foreign countries with his girlfriend, actress and model Laura Harrier. A major injury will do that to a baller.
The worst part hasn’t even come yet. Thompson knows it.
“Honestly, we’ll see in two weeks when I see my teammates out there playing,” Thompson said of the difficulty of rehab. “But, as of right now, it’s easy to lock in and focus on my rehab every day because that’s all I have. I don’t have games. I don’t have to go to the arena. But when that starts, I know it’s going to be a very tough challenge. It’s going to be really hard.”
Thompson has been studying ACL recovery. His findings are humbling. He can rattle off how long it took other athletes.
Zach Lavine. “He took 11-and-a-half months.”
Tom Brady. “He was out a whole year.”
Danilo Gallinari. “He was out a year.”
Adrian Peterson. “What Adrian Peterson did I have an appreciation for. Nine months?That’s unbelievable to come back that quick. That is crazy. That is incredible what he did.”
Thompson said he’s about a month away from jogging. Currently, he can take set shots. He can dribble. The patience part is hard. Thompson doesn’t miss games. Over his eight seasons, he avoided major injury. He was a marvel in his locker room for playing through injuries that would leave many players in a body cast. Game 3 against the Raptors was his first-ever missed playoff game. But this ACL, man, it has robbed him of that invincible feeling. He isn’t even thinking about coming back early. He scoffs at the notion he will bounce back from this like he did most everything else.
You know what else it’s done? Put his Game 6 in new light.
Thompson has scored an NBA-record 37 points in a quarter before. In 2016 he saved the Warriors’ season with an NBA-record 11 3s, in an elimination game on the road in Oklahoma City. He once scored 60 points in 29 minutes.
His new greatest accomplishment? A pair of free throws with 2:22 left in the third quarter of Game 6 in the 2019 NBA Finals.
Something clicked for Thompson in the Finals. Even now, he can hardly articulate why. He just knows his confidence was at an all-time high. It didn’t make too much sense. Thompson hadn’t ever been lights out in the Finals. He was coming off a mediocre-by-his-standards Western Conference finals in the sweep over Portland. He was incredible on defense against Damian Lillard, helping hold the Blazers All-Star to 22.3 points on 37 percent shooting. But offensively, Thompson was cold with his shot. He totaled 86 points on 86 shots in the series. He was 11 of 32 from 3.
So why was he so confident in the Finals?
Something about matching up with Kawhi Leonard. The then-Raptors star was having a legendary postseason. And without Durant (who missed the first four Finals games with a quad injury and then suffered the Achilles injury in Game 5), Leonard was going to be Thompson’s defensive assignment. The daunting task prompted Thompson to dig deeper. He gave himself a pep talk, convincing himself he was on that level.
“Kawhi is one of the best players in the world,” Thompson said. “Man, we were in the same pre-draft workouts eight years ago, going toe-to-toe, like, battling — 1-on-1 drills, 3-on-3 drills. I’m like, ‘Just because it’s the NBA Finals, it’s no different. I know I can, like, hang with him.'”
It worked. It also is partly to blame for him getting hurt.
In the early stages of his recovery, Thompson would ask himself, rhetorically, why he went up for that dunk in transition. What if he just tried a reverse layup instead? But now, after getting a clear view of the big picture, he doesn’t regret trying to dunk. It was the NBA Finals. His confidence was soaring. He was trying to dunk everything.
Also, it created what he believes is his greatest moment as an NBA player.
Thompson can’t fully articulate why he went back onto the court after the injury. The NBA rule requires that any player who checks out of the game because of an injury must shoot the free throws he was awarded or else he can’t return to the game. If someone else has to shoot his free throws, he is not allowed to come back. But Thompson tore his left ACL. He was done for the game, for the series. He wasn’t coming back. He didn’t need to preserve his ability to return.
But when he was told in the hallway he had to shoot his free throws, something compelled him to go back. He hadn’t yet come to grips with his own mortality as a player.
“I knew I hurt something, but I’ve just never done an ACL or any type of ligament,” Thompson said. “I’ve never torn nothing in my life. So, when I did that, I thought it might have been a sprained knee. Maybe I’d go back … I didn’t even think about it. I just heard that I had to go shoot the free throws and I literally just turned around and walked back like it was …”
Thompson paused again. He leaned in to scribble his signature on the No. 11 of a blue Warriors jersey when he suddenly stopped before the marker hit the fabric. He stayed silent a few seconds, rummaging through his thoughts for an explanation.
“Like I had to,” he continued. “I don’t know. It was just something in me that told me to. And, I don’t know, man, it’s the Finals, you know? I don’t want to leave points on the board. Those are hard to get. So many dudes have a whole illustrious career and never even got a sniff of the Finals. I was very lucky to be in that position.
“I didn’t think it was that big of a deal after the Finals ended. But as time goes on and I watch the video and hear the roar of the crowd, I realize it’s a pretty big deal. That’s No. 1 because I think it shows people how much I care, how bad I want to be out there. It showed them that I’m all in with this basketball thing.”
After he made the free throw, he backpedaled to the defensive end.
“I was trying to stay in,” Thompson said. “Not even, like, consciously trying. Just like, my intuition. After you hit a free throw, you just jog back on defense. So I wasn’t really in deep thought or anything about like, ‘Dang this could hurt.’ I just wanted to keep playing. It was Game 6. It was the Finals.”
This moment, coming back into the game with a torn ACL, is now sentimental for Thompson. He was Willis Reed — “I wasn’t limping that bad,” he said — sending chills through Dub Nation. He loves this moment because it signifies his appreciation, the depths of which his injury has uncovered. The same guy who, as a sophomore at Washington State, left his MVP trophy from the 2009 Great Alaska Shootout at the security line in the airport because TSA wouldn’t let it through, now fully comprehends the deeper meaning of a free throw in the Finals. The same guy who trolled opponents for blaming injuries after their losses to the Warriors now showing sympathy for those who have suffered.
Part 2
“In my mind, yes, we would’ve won if I did’t get hurt,” Thompson said. “But that’s just the nature of sports, you know? What-ifs? It doesn’t matter. It’s if you do your deed or not. In my mind, I think we would’ve. But you never know. That’s the hard part you’ve got to accept. I look at all the guys who had bad luck getting injured against us the last few years, and I’ve honestly become so much more sympathetic. Yeah. That’s just the nature of the beast.”
The fun-loving, rambunctious, Y.O.L.O. spirit will return eventually, when his limbs are fully healed and he isn’t constantly reminded of his own vulnerability. But this new guy is here now. Experience has produced more maturity.
This is part of Thompson now. Introspective. Thoughtful. One who looks forward to mentoring young players and is legit proud of Kevon Looney.
“He’s coming into his own,” Thompson said. “I’m seeing him in Japan running camps and stuff. And that man might’ve spoken 30 words in the last four years.”
Grateful. Humbled. One who can enjoy a warm kinship with a 74-year-old man.
“I saw Phil Jackson the other night,” Thompson said, already smiling. “In L.A. at a restaurant. First thing he asked was, ‘How’s the knee?’ Then he goes, ‘I had to take a year off. It was awful.’ I thought that was hilarious. Man, this dude is a real hooper for life. He wasn’t like, ‘Ahhh. You’re going to enjoy the time off, blah, blah, blah.’ He was like, ‘A year off was terrible.’ That’s funny. This dude’s a real one for that. Then he asked me about family in the Bahamas. It was cool chopping it up with Phil.”
Thompson said he’s learned recovering from an ACL is a two-pronged process. Prong 1 is the physical work required to strengthen the knee. That part, Thompson isn’t worried about. Work is what has improved his game every year for eight straight years. Work is why he is sure he will be able to handle the extra load with Durant gone. Work is why he believes the Warriors still have a five-year window of greatness.
Prong 2 is mental toughness. That’s going to test his limits. It threatens to drive him crazy when the games start.
“It’s mental,” Thompson said. “I know I’m going to put the work in. I always put the work in. It’s the mental …”
Thompson paused mid-sentence again. He’s staring ahead again. He was shaking his head in disbelief. This time at the television. Jacksonville quarterback Gardner Minshew had just lobbed a pretty 22-yard pass to D.J. Chark for a touchdown.
“It’s unbelievable how good this dude’s playing,” Thompson said of Minshew. “Washington State. It’s crazy.”
The Klay you know is still there, meaning he is, sometimes, only half there. But he can’t stay there. Not now. Now anymore. He has had to dig too deep, deep enough that we finally get a glimpse of his depth. He faces this rehab saga with a method that’s less a process than a rock-solid identity: perpetually distracted, laser focused and grounded in his loyalties — with visions of the peak he reached in the Finals. It could produce the best Klay Thompson we’ve ever seen.
The fun-loving, rambunctious, Y.O.L.O. spirit will return eventually, when his limbs are fully healed and he isn’t constantly reminded of his own vulnerability. But this new guy is here now. Experience has produced more maturity.
This is part of Thompson now. Introspective. Thoughtful. One who looks forward to mentoring young players and is legit proud of Kevon Looney.
“He’s coming into his own,” Thompson said. “I’m seeing him in Japan running camps and stuff. And that man might’ve spoken 30 words in the last four years.”
Grateful. Humbled. One who can enjoy a warm kinship with a 74-year-old man.
“I saw Phil Jackson the other night,” Thompson said, already smiling. “In L.A. at a restaurant. First thing he asked was, ‘How’s the knee?’ Then he goes, ‘I had to take a year off. It was awful.’ I thought that was hilarious. Man, this dude is a real hooper for life. He wasn’t like, ‘Ahhh. You’re going to enjoy the time off, blah, blah, blah.’ He was like, ‘A year off was terrible.’ That’s funny. This dude’s a real one for that. Then he asked me about family in the Bahamas. It was cool chopping it up with Phil.”
Thompson said he’s learned recovering from an ACL is a two-pronged process. Prong 1 is the physical work required to strengthen the knee. That part, Thompson isn’t worried about. Work is what has improved his game every year for eight straight years. Work is why he is sure he will be able to handle the extra load with Durant gone. Work is why he believes the Warriors still have a five-year window of greatness.
Prong 2 is mental toughness. That’s going to test his limits. It threatens to drive him crazy when the games start.
“It’s mental,” Thompson said. “I know I’m going to put the work in. I always put the work in. It’s the mental …”
Thompson paused mid-sentence again. He’s staring ahead again. He was shaking his head in disbelief. This time at the television. Jacksonville quarterback Gardner Minshew had just lobbed a pretty 22-yard pass to D.J. Chark for a touchdown.
“It’s unbelievable how good this dude’s playing,” Thompson said of Minshew. “Washington State. It’s crazy.”
The Klay you know is still there, meaning he is, sometimes, only half there. But he can’t stay there. Not now. Now anymore. He has had to dig too deep, deep enough that we finally get a glimpse of his depth. He faces this rehab saga with a method that’s less a process than a rock-solid identity: perpetually distracted, laser focused and grounded in his loyalties — with visions of the peak he reached in the Finals. It could produce the best Klay Thompson we’ve ever seen.
Last season, Auburn snatched a win away from Texas A&M despite only having 19 rushing yards on 21 carries. The Tigers needed some late passing game magic from veteran quarterback Jarrett Stidham to pull off the fourth-quarter comeback at home.
That wasn’t going to be a repeatable strategy in 2019. Auburn had to play Texas A&M in College Station this season, and it had to do so with true freshman quarterback Bo Nix making his first career start in a true road game.
Nix was going to need help in order for the Tigers to beat the Aggies, and his final line of 12 completions on 20 attempts for just 100 yards Saturday reflected that.
The challenge was a stiff one. Texas A&M ranked eighth nationally in rush yards allowed per carry in 2018, and that was just the first season under defensive coordinator Mike Elko — a rising name within coaching circles. Despite some new faces up front, the Aggies entered their matchup against the Tigers allowing just 3.26 yards per carry, which included a quiet 121-yard performance from defending national champion Clemson’s offense in Week 2.
Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn recognized the challenge of running against Texas A&M early. He made specific mention of the Aggies’ “very impressive” gap integrity on run fits during his weekly press conference last Tuesday.
The Tigers’ own rushing attack, despite some strong overall numbers, hadn’t been overly impressive throughout the first three weeks of the season. Inside running was particularly a problem in the first half against Oregon and throughout the win against Tulane. The matchup of a strong, sound run defense against an inconsistent running game didn’t favor Auburn.
So, when Malzahn put together his game plan for Texas A&M alongside offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham, co-offensive coordinator Kodi Burns, offensive line coach J.B. Grimes and running backs coach Cadillac Williams, he decided to go away from his usual running game roots.
“Early on, you know, common sense tells you, you’ve got a true freshman quarterback on the road making his first start — they’re going to get after him,” Malzahn said. “And they blitzed us.”
Auburn started its first drive against Texas A&M with an inside zone to Shaun Shivers, a Nix keeper on a man-blocked play and a quick screen to Harold Joiner. Between the personnel choices and the play calls, Malzahn’s first scripted possession was already a change of pace.
Joiner’s reception got Auburn on the right hash, which was a trigger for Malzahn to call a tweak to one of his old standbys — the buck sweep.
Nix handed the ball off to Whitlow, who went toward the sideline as guards Marquel Harrell and Mike Horton pulled to the right. As soon as the Aggies recognized the buck sweep, they over-pursued to that side of the field, which gave Anthony Schwartz plenty of room to catch a reverse toss from Whitlow and race to the left for a 57-yard touchdown.
“We know Texas A&M, they love the run key,” Schwartz said. “As soon as they see the ball come out, they run it down. As soon as they see the guards pull, they’re running the field.”
Schwartz got a solid crackback block from Nix, and left tackle Prince Tega Wanogho tried to create some more room on that side of the field. But, in reality, Schwartz didn’t need it. The former junior world record holder in the 100-meter sprint already had enough to score.
“I knew it was coming soon,” Schwartz said. “We kind of go by hashes, so when I knew when we were on that hash, and I’m like, ‘OK, I’m ready.’ And then (Malzahn) called it and I’m like, ‘Alright. Touchdown. Get the band ready.’”
The touchdown was the first carry of the season for Schwartz, who has spent most of the last several weeks working his way back from a broken hand. It was a strong combination of offensive play call, opportunity, defensive aggressiveness and choice of personnel.
Most importantly, Schwartz’s touchdown set the tone for what was about to come from Auburn’s running game against a tough Texas A&M defense.
Running right at the Aggies wasn’t going to be the best strategy for the Tigers’ offense. When they tried in the first half, they often failed — eight inside runs went for just 14 yards before halftime. On the flip side, Auburn had 93 rushing yards on eight outside runs in the first half. Take away Schwartz’s touchdown, and that’s still an average of 5.14 yards per outside run.
“On (Schwartz’s) reverse, they blitzed us,” Malzahn said. “We knew they would, so we were trying to do some things to hurt the blitz. And then we had one where we tossed it to Anthony, and they blitzed us. And then they kind of settled down a little bit. So it kind of went by the script, you know, what we hoped would happen.”
The second play Malzahn referred to was technically a pass, when Nix hit Schwartz on a fly sweep for 18 yards on the third drive of the game. Those plays are an extension of the running game, as they’re regular sweeps that just feature the ball leaving the quarterback’s hands in a forward motion.
Once again, Texas A&M’s defense charged hard as soon as it saw two pulling guards to the right side. The play went to the left, though, and all Auburn needed were a couple of blocks from Malik Miller and Seth Williams to spring an 18-yard gain.
Two plays later, Auburn scored again when Texas A&M anticipated a running play on a Joey Gatewood snap out of the wildcat. Gatewood faked a naked bootleg, and tight end John Samuel Shenker leaked out of the formation for a wide-open touchdown catch.
“That play is designed to go outside and he stuck back and threw it up and over,” Malzahn said. “That was an impressive play by Joey.”
Once again, Auburn tried to hit Texas A&M’s aggressive defense on the outside. While pressure got in Gatewood’s face — and the quarterback was helped tremendously by a lunging block from Spencer Nigh — it still was a simple case of taking advantage with a tweak to the normal procedure.
“You know, everything is not going to go as perfectly as you practiced,” Gatewood said. “Maybe it will, but sometimes it won’t. You’ve just got to adjust. It was an easy adjustment. He was wide open. Just had to get him the ball.”
After Gatewood’s touchdown pass, Auburn’s defense hit a rut in the second quarter. Texas A&M adjusted, and Auburn’s offense had a hard time setting the edge that was the key to getting off to a fast start in the first quarter.
Adjustments had to be made in the halftime locker room, and one of the most obvious ones came in the form of personnel usage.
Auburn ran more plays out of 10 personnel than any other grouping against Texas A&M, which is a change from the usual under Malzahn. In fact, against Kent State in Week 3, Auburn’s offense was more efficient when playing with either an H-back or a tight end in the formation.
The Tigers flipped that around in Week 4. Auburn called nine plays in 10 personnel and 14 in 20 personnel in the first half. It then called 15 plays in 10 personnel and nine in 20 personnel in the second half.
The 20 personnel numbers in the above table come with a caveat, as Schwartz’s 57-yard touchdown came with an H-back and a running back in the formation. Take that play out, and Auburn averaged 1.23 yards per play in 20 personnel on Saturday.
While that is a rough number for Auburn, it comes with a reasonable explanation from a strategic perspective. Texas A&M’s run defense is strong, especially up the middle. Playing with an H-back almost always guarantees an extra defender in the box, making it tougher to run the ball strictly from a numbers perspective.
Auburn countered this by spreading Texas A&M’s defense out even more in the second half. The result was two more touchdown drives to open the third and fourth quarters.
That wasn’t going to be a repeatable strategy in 2019. Auburn had to play Texas A&M in College Station this season, and it had to do so with true freshman quarterback Bo Nix making his first career start in a true road game.
Nix was going to need help in order for the Tigers to beat the Aggies, and his final line of 12 completions on 20 attempts for just 100 yards Saturday reflected that.
The challenge was a stiff one. Texas A&M ranked eighth nationally in rush yards allowed per carry in 2018, and that was just the first season under defensive coordinator Mike Elko — a rising name within coaching circles. Despite some new faces up front, the Aggies entered their matchup against the Tigers allowing just 3.26 yards per carry, which included a quiet 121-yard performance from defending national champion Clemson’s offense in Week 2.
Auburn head coach Gus Malzahn recognized the challenge of running against Texas A&M early. He made specific mention of the Aggies’ “very impressive” gap integrity on run fits during his weekly press conference last Tuesday.
The Tigers’ own rushing attack, despite some strong overall numbers, hadn’t been overly impressive throughout the first three weeks of the season. Inside running was particularly a problem in the first half against Oregon and throughout the win against Tulane. The matchup of a strong, sound run defense against an inconsistent running game didn’t favor Auburn.
So, when Malzahn put together his game plan for Texas A&M alongside offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham, co-offensive coordinator Kodi Burns, offensive line coach J.B. Grimes and running backs coach Cadillac Williams, he decided to go away from his usual running game roots.
“Early on, you know, common sense tells you, you’ve got a true freshman quarterback on the road making his first start — they’re going to get after him,” Malzahn said. “And they blitzed us.”
Auburn started its first drive against Texas A&M with an inside zone to Shaun Shivers, a Nix keeper on a man-blocked play and a quick screen to Harold Joiner. Between the personnel choices and the play calls, Malzahn’s first scripted possession was already a change of pace.
Joiner’s reception got Auburn on the right hash, which was a trigger for Malzahn to call a tweak to one of his old standbys — the buck sweep.
Nix handed the ball off to Whitlow, who went toward the sideline as guards Marquel Harrell and Mike Horton pulled to the right. As soon as the Aggies recognized the buck sweep, they over-pursued to that side of the field, which gave Anthony Schwartz plenty of room to catch a reverse toss from Whitlow and race to the left for a 57-yard touchdown.
“We know Texas A&M, they love the run key,” Schwartz said. “As soon as they see the ball come out, they run it down. As soon as they see the guards pull, they’re running the field.”
Schwartz got a solid crackback block from Nix, and left tackle Prince Tega Wanogho tried to create some more room on that side of the field. But, in reality, Schwartz didn’t need it. The former junior world record holder in the 100-meter sprint already had enough to score.
“I knew it was coming soon,” Schwartz said. “We kind of go by hashes, so when I knew when we were on that hash, and I’m like, ‘OK, I’m ready.’ And then (Malzahn) called it and I’m like, ‘Alright. Touchdown. Get the band ready.’”
The touchdown was the first carry of the season for Schwartz, who has spent most of the last several weeks working his way back from a broken hand. It was a strong combination of offensive play call, opportunity, defensive aggressiveness and choice of personnel.
Most importantly, Schwartz’s touchdown set the tone for what was about to come from Auburn’s running game against a tough Texas A&M defense.
Running right at the Aggies wasn’t going to be the best strategy for the Tigers’ offense. When they tried in the first half, they often failed — eight inside runs went for just 14 yards before halftime. On the flip side, Auburn had 93 rushing yards on eight outside runs in the first half. Take away Schwartz’s touchdown, and that’s still an average of 5.14 yards per outside run.
“On (Schwartz’s) reverse, they blitzed us,” Malzahn said. “We knew they would, so we were trying to do some things to hurt the blitz. And then we had one where we tossed it to Anthony, and they blitzed us. And then they kind of settled down a little bit. So it kind of went by the script, you know, what we hoped would happen.”
The second play Malzahn referred to was technically a pass, when Nix hit Schwartz on a fly sweep for 18 yards on the third drive of the game. Those plays are an extension of the running game, as they’re regular sweeps that just feature the ball leaving the quarterback’s hands in a forward motion.
Once again, Texas A&M’s defense charged hard as soon as it saw two pulling guards to the right side. The play went to the left, though, and all Auburn needed were a couple of blocks from Malik Miller and Seth Williams to spring an 18-yard gain.
Two plays later, Auburn scored again when Texas A&M anticipated a running play on a Joey Gatewood snap out of the wildcat. Gatewood faked a naked bootleg, and tight end John Samuel Shenker leaked out of the formation for a wide-open touchdown catch.
“That play is designed to go outside and he stuck back and threw it up and over,” Malzahn said. “That was an impressive play by Joey.”
Once again, Auburn tried to hit Texas A&M’s aggressive defense on the outside. While pressure got in Gatewood’s face — and the quarterback was helped tremendously by a lunging block from Spencer Nigh — it still was a simple case of taking advantage with a tweak to the normal procedure.
“You know, everything is not going to go as perfectly as you practiced,” Gatewood said. “Maybe it will, but sometimes it won’t. You’ve just got to adjust. It was an easy adjustment. He was wide open. Just had to get him the ball.”
After Gatewood’s touchdown pass, Auburn’s defense hit a rut in the second quarter. Texas A&M adjusted, and Auburn’s offense had a hard time setting the edge that was the key to getting off to a fast start in the first quarter.
Adjustments had to be made in the halftime locker room, and one of the most obvious ones came in the form of personnel usage.
Auburn ran more plays out of 10 personnel than any other grouping against Texas A&M, which is a change from the usual under Malzahn. In fact, against Kent State in Week 3, Auburn’s offense was more efficient when playing with either an H-back or a tight end in the formation.
The Tigers flipped that around in Week 4. Auburn called nine plays in 10 personnel and 14 in 20 personnel in the first half. It then called 15 plays in 10 personnel and nine in 20 personnel in the second half.
The 20 personnel numbers in the above table come with a caveat, as Schwartz’s 57-yard touchdown came with an H-back and a running back in the formation. Take that play out, and Auburn averaged 1.23 yards per play in 20 personnel on Saturday.
While that is a rough number for Auburn, it comes with a reasonable explanation from a strategic perspective. Texas A&M’s run defense is strong, especially up the middle. Playing with an H-back almost always guarantees an extra defender in the box, making it tougher to run the ball strictly from a numbers perspective.
Auburn countered this by spreading Texas A&M’s defense out even more in the second half. The result was two more touchdown drives to open the third and fourth quarters.
Part 2 (Auburn)
we ran it.”
With 10 personnel on the field, Auburn often showed a five-wide look early in the play clock. On the above play, Whitlow is bouncing because he had just been motioned into the backfield from out wide. This routine gave both Malzahn and Nix more time to read the defense prior to the snap, and it was a way to manufacture inside runs against more favorable box counts.
“That’s a good, aggressive defense,” Schwartz said. “We know how they love to fit. We just wanted to make them fit wrong, pretty much. If they fit inside, we run outside. As soon as we got them to stay back, that’s when we started gashing them.”
After going for just 14 yards on inside runs in the first half, Auburn had 47 in the second half, more than doubling its average per carry. Auburn’s threat to run to the outside — which it did 10 more times after halftime for 44 yards — and the spread-out formations created more room to attack Texas A&M up the middle.
That also included the passing game, when Auburn took advantage of the return of Seth Williams by hitting him for a pair of slants over the middle of the field in the second half.
The first went for a touchdown, as Auburn correctly predicted that Texas A&M’s pass defense would be worried about Williams’ threat to go over the top yet again in the red zone.
“We hit the slant, and last year, we hit the fade to Seth,” Malzahn said. “We thought (that) — and, sure enough, they’re playing outside.”
The second one took advantage of a heavy blitz toward the edges, where Texas A&M could either get after Nix or shut down any chance of a tricky outside run on third-and-medium. Instead, Nix made a great second read to Williams, who caught the ball in the space where the linebackers had vacated.
“When you hurt them on the perimeter, a lot of times, it’s a little bit easier,” Malzahn said. “And then we kind of ran the ball inside and then we kind of got the shovel working on the outside, too. You’ve got to mix things up.”
Mixing things up was a key theme for Auburn’s running game against Texas A&M. The Tigers only ran back-to-back inside zone runs three times. Two of those times came on the opening drive of the fourth quarter, when the Tigers went 69 yards for a touchdown on 11 rushing plays and just one pass.
That crucial drive was also an example of keeping the Texas A&M defense on its toes. Once Auburn started getting more movement on the inside, the Aggies’ linebackers cheated more toward the middle. That opened up room for the shotgun toss, or what Malzahn called the “shovel.” Auburn ran three tosses on that drive for seven, five and nine yards.
After several zone and toss calls, Auburn capped the touchdown drive with a gap-blocked inside run — a “GT” power that Whitlow, who became the workhorse in the second half after getting just two first-half touches, turned into a hard-fought score. Once again, it was a play out of 10 personnel that was started with pre-snap motion into the backfield.
“You know what you’ve got to do,” Malzahn said on the drive. “You’re on the side with your guys and it’s, ‘Hey, let’s go down and score, and we’ll put the game away.’ They just got it done. They executed, played with great pad level, great physicality. … It was just mixing up some zone, mixing up some gap. Our guys blocked good on the perimeter. That was a big-time drive.”
Malzahn’s rushing attack thrives on mixing up zone and man/gap schemes. And while it was understandably tougher to get much going in the former category, the Tigers made up for it with the latter.
Auburn went power and then zone with Whitlow before facing a third-and-5. After a timeout, the Tigers executed a perfect split zone read keeper with Nix. That back-and-forth between zone and man/gap continued all the way through the final drive of the game, when the Tigers needed one first down to seal the victory.
Nigh faked like he was going to take the edge defender on a typical split zone handoff. But he side-stepped him and went to the second level to seal a defensive back. Nix read the defensive end, who started to cheat toward the handoff and had enough room to convert.
Take away Texas A&M’s lone sack of Nix and the final kneel, and Auburn finished the game with 201 true rushing yards against Texas A&M. With its own defense holding the Aggies to 72 true rushing yards, Auburn flipped the script on last season’s dramatic victory over Texas A&M.
By being the team that could establish the run — even if it meant some unorthodox but effective play-calling by Malzahn — Auburn was in control early. That went a long way in getting a huge road victory with a true freshman quarterback that still has plenty of room to improve in the passing department.
And, as Nix said after the game Saturday, the way the Tigers finished on the ground could have long-lasting effects for a still-growing offense.
“We ran the ball at will,” Nix said of Auburn’s fourth-quarter touchdown drive. “We kind of did whatever we wanted. To finish a game like that, those kind of drives are huge, especially for a confidence-booster. Now we know, against a good team, we can do stuff like that.”
With 10 personnel on the field, Auburn often showed a five-wide look early in the play clock. On the above play, Whitlow is bouncing because he had just been motioned into the backfield from out wide. This routine gave both Malzahn and Nix more time to read the defense prior to the snap, and it was a way to manufacture inside runs against more favorable box counts.
“That’s a good, aggressive defense,” Schwartz said. “We know how they love to fit. We just wanted to make them fit wrong, pretty much. If they fit inside, we run outside. As soon as we got them to stay back, that’s when we started gashing them.”
After going for just 14 yards on inside runs in the first half, Auburn had 47 in the second half, more than doubling its average per carry. Auburn’s threat to run to the outside — which it did 10 more times after halftime for 44 yards — and the spread-out formations created more room to attack Texas A&M up the middle.
That also included the passing game, when Auburn took advantage of the return of Seth Williams by hitting him for a pair of slants over the middle of the field in the second half.
The first went for a touchdown, as Auburn correctly predicted that Texas A&M’s pass defense would be worried about Williams’ threat to go over the top yet again in the red zone.
“We hit the slant, and last year, we hit the fade to Seth,” Malzahn said. “We thought (that) — and, sure enough, they’re playing outside.”
The second one took advantage of a heavy blitz toward the edges, where Texas A&M could either get after Nix or shut down any chance of a tricky outside run on third-and-medium. Instead, Nix made a great second read to Williams, who caught the ball in the space where the linebackers had vacated.
“When you hurt them on the perimeter, a lot of times, it’s a little bit easier,” Malzahn said. “And then we kind of ran the ball inside and then we kind of got the shovel working on the outside, too. You’ve got to mix things up.”
Mixing things up was a key theme for Auburn’s running game against Texas A&M. The Tigers only ran back-to-back inside zone runs three times. Two of those times came on the opening drive of the fourth quarter, when the Tigers went 69 yards for a touchdown on 11 rushing plays and just one pass.
That crucial drive was also an example of keeping the Texas A&M defense on its toes. Once Auburn started getting more movement on the inside, the Aggies’ linebackers cheated more toward the middle. That opened up room for the shotgun toss, or what Malzahn called the “shovel.” Auburn ran three tosses on that drive for seven, five and nine yards.
After several zone and toss calls, Auburn capped the touchdown drive with a gap-blocked inside run — a “GT” power that Whitlow, who became the workhorse in the second half after getting just two first-half touches, turned into a hard-fought score. Once again, it was a play out of 10 personnel that was started with pre-snap motion into the backfield.
“You know what you’ve got to do,” Malzahn said on the drive. “You’re on the side with your guys and it’s, ‘Hey, let’s go down and score, and we’ll put the game away.’ They just got it done. They executed, played with great pad level, great physicality. … It was just mixing up some zone, mixing up some gap. Our guys blocked good on the perimeter. That was a big-time drive.”
Malzahn’s rushing attack thrives on mixing up zone and man/gap schemes. And while it was understandably tougher to get much going in the former category, the Tigers made up for it with the latter.
Auburn went power and then zone with Whitlow before facing a third-and-5. After a timeout, the Tigers executed a perfect split zone read keeper with Nix. That back-and-forth between zone and man/gap continued all the way through the final drive of the game, when the Tigers needed one first down to seal the victory.
Nigh faked like he was going to take the edge defender on a typical split zone handoff. But he side-stepped him and went to the second level to seal a defensive back. Nix read the defensive end, who started to cheat toward the handoff and had enough room to convert.
Take away Texas A&M’s lone sack of Nix and the final kneel, and Auburn finished the game with 201 true rushing yards against Texas A&M. With its own defense holding the Aggies to 72 true rushing yards, Auburn flipped the script on last season’s dramatic victory over Texas A&M.
By being the team that could establish the run — even if it meant some unorthodox but effective play-calling by Malzahn — Auburn was in control early. That went a long way in getting a huge road victory with a true freshman quarterback that still has plenty of room to improve in the passing department.
And, as Nix said after the game Saturday, the way the Tigers finished on the ground could have long-lasting effects for a still-growing offense.
“We ran the ball at will,” Nix said of Auburn’s fourth-quarter touchdown drive. “We kind of did whatever we wanted. To finish a game like that, those kind of drives are huge, especially for a confidence-booster. Now we know, against a good team, we can do stuff like that.”
G.O.A.T Squad Spokesman
Logic Is Absent Wherever Hate Is Present
Patrick Mahomes’ third-down pass sailed high, the Chiefs burned a timeout ahead of fourth down and Ford Field sounded like it was going to shake from its foundation. A massive swell of noise that promised to keep rising further if the Lions only could stop Mahomes one last time.
They couldn’t. They didn’t. The reigning league MVP saw a hole open in front of him on fourth-and-8 and scrambled for an easy 15. Armed with new life, the Chiefs kept pressing. Eight plays later, Darrel Williams powered into the end zone for a 34-30 lead, leaving those desperate Detroit fans — not far removed from high-fiving and screaming and pulling out their phones to record a potential watershed moment for their team — charging, disgruntled, toward the exits.
In their locker room, after their last two Hail Marys went unanswered, the Lions players faced the question always asked of the plucky underdog who goes down swinging: Can you take any comfort in keeping this close, in playing so hard?
Their answer, almost universally: Screw that.
“There’s no moral victories, I keep saying it but it’s true,” linebacker Devon Kennard said. “Like, all right, people want to pat us on the back because we played with the Chiefs. We want to win. I feel like we could’ve won, but we didn’t win.”
All week long, the Lions refused to suggest that this meeting with Kansas City might serve as a gauge of their worth as a contender. Just another game, another chance to get better. That was the official stance, for two reasons: 1) because there was no point, win or lose, in building up a Week 4 game as anything more than it was; and 2) because the Lions didn’t head into Sunday viewing themselves as some overmatched club in need of a miracle.
“I always knew we were good, I always knew we had the talent to compete and play against the best,” safety Tracy Walker said. “I knew for a fact (with) the type of talent we have on this team, we can definitely compete with the best of ‘em. And we’re going to continue to show that. …
“It could be the Kansas City Chiefs or it could be the Miami Dolphins — I don’t want to use that as a comparison, but that’s just what it is. It don’t matter who we’re playing against, we’re going to go out and try to win every game.”
Hey, everyone knows the reality. The Chiefs are an elite Super Bowl contender, while the Lions are trying to put themselves even on the fringe of that conversation. There’s a gap between the two clubs who teed it up at Ford Field on Sunday, one that’s up to Matt Patricia & Co., to close.
There also is room to admit that the Lions played their butts off, despite being down a bunch of key pieces. They started Sunday with a hobbled Matthew Stafford and without Darius Slay (among others), only to lose Quandre Diggs early and then T.J. Hockenson in the second half, to a scary-looking concussion. The Lions’ offense stayed aggressive nonetheless, while the defense forced Mahomes to live on short and intermediate throws, essentially dragging this one out as far as Detroit possibly could.
The Lions were right there, one fourth-down stop from securing an impressive win. A good fight? A close call? A “moral victory”? Call it what you want, but the players afterward looked and sounded much like they did in Arizona back in Week 1, when they’d let a victory slip away.
“The NFL doesn’t do rankings,” running back Kerryon Johnson said. “Nobody cares at the end of the year if you almost beat the best team. There’s only one team happy, and in order to be that happy one you’ve got to beat other good teams.”
Johnson ran for a season-high 125 yards on a career-high 26 carries, but the play that hung with him was his third-quarter fumble at the goal line, which turned into a bizarre touchdown for the Chiefs. Almost everyone in the place thought the play was dead — the line judge appeared to be walking in with a spot, and the Lions actually had multiple guys trotting onto the field as substitutions for the next play.
Kansas City’s Bashaud Breeland scooped up Johnson’s fumble, though, and a handful of his teammates escorted him 100 yards to the opposite end zone. (The official explanation from NFL senior VP of officiating, provided via a pool report: “The officials ruled on the field that they did not see the ball carrier down. They did not see a body part other than the hand or foot down. The ball comes loose and then the ball was picked up by Kansas City, No. 21. He was not touched after he possessed the football. There was no whistle on the play, and he runs it back for a touchdown.”)
The crowd was rather boisterous in that moment, too, convinced Detroit had been handed the short end of the stick yet again. For Johnson, however, it was a mistake that shouldn’t have happened, one of many avoidable miscues the Lions made Sunday. Stafford’s fumble inside the Chiefs’ 10, the illegal-snap penalty ahead of a fourth-and-1, the assignment (or play-call) breakdown on Mahomes’ fourth-down scramble.
They all add up in a game this tight. And they’re all the more reason why the Lions weren’t in the mood for orange slices and runner-up trophies when the final whistle sounded.
“I don’t think we need to prove anything to anybody,” Stafford said. “… We’re a good football team. We lost to another good football team today. There were a bunch of great plays in this game, and a couple of bad plays by each team made in this game. That’s the way it goes in the NFL. It came down to the last 15 seconds. They were undefeated coming into this game, so were we. Somebody was going to have to lose. … It was a good opportunity to beat a good team and we were darn close.”
Did this loss feel different, somehow, than all the other Lions’ heartbreakers? In the moment, it did, maybe because the Lions are closer to becoming what they desire than they have been in the past.
Which is also sort of the point. When the Lions kept it tight against the Panthers and Steelers in 2017, or when they battled the Rams and Bears last season, they were punching up a class and it was obvious to everyone. Now, there’s at least a possibility — if you’re willing to be Charlie Brown with Lucy holding another kick for you — that this team itself is, well, pretty good.
The Lions didn’t gain a lot from pushing the Chiefs to the limit, because they think they should be winning these games.
“We responded well, but we just left too many plays out there,” Kennard said. “When you’re playing a really good team, some of the best teams in the league, you can’t leave all those extra plays out there. I feel like almost every player in this locker room, offensively and defensively, will feel like there’s a play or two we left out there. A couple of those plays go our way, that’s the game.”
Where this Lions season goes from here will dictate how we ultimately remember Sunday’s classic. Turn up out of the bye and roll over against the Packers and Vikings? Same old problems.
Build on what worked in Week 4 and start stacking together wins? Then everyone outside the locker room will believe what everyone inside it was preaching Sunday, that this wasn’t a matchup of contender and also-ran: It was a team that’s already arrived in Kansas City against a team, Detroit, that legitimately feels like it’s right on the cusp.
Moral victories? They’re meaningless. The Lions don’t want ’em, and they shouldn’t. Eventually, this team has to be better than that, and maybe the 2019 version still will be.
“Win is a win,” said cornerback Justin Coleman. “Loss is a loss, you know
They couldn’t. They didn’t. The reigning league MVP saw a hole open in front of him on fourth-and-8 and scrambled for an easy 15. Armed with new life, the Chiefs kept pressing. Eight plays later, Darrel Williams powered into the end zone for a 34-30 lead, leaving those desperate Detroit fans — not far removed from high-fiving and screaming and pulling out their phones to record a potential watershed moment for their team — charging, disgruntled, toward the exits.
In their locker room, after their last two Hail Marys went unanswered, the Lions players faced the question always asked of the plucky underdog who goes down swinging: Can you take any comfort in keeping this close, in playing so hard?
Their answer, almost universally: Screw that.
“There’s no moral victories, I keep saying it but it’s true,” linebacker Devon Kennard said. “Like, all right, people want to pat us on the back because we played with the Chiefs. We want to win. I feel like we could’ve won, but we didn’t win.”
All week long, the Lions refused to suggest that this meeting with Kansas City might serve as a gauge of their worth as a contender. Just another game, another chance to get better. That was the official stance, for two reasons: 1) because there was no point, win or lose, in building up a Week 4 game as anything more than it was; and 2) because the Lions didn’t head into Sunday viewing themselves as some overmatched club in need of a miracle.
“I always knew we were good, I always knew we had the talent to compete and play against the best,” safety Tracy Walker said. “I knew for a fact (with) the type of talent we have on this team, we can definitely compete with the best of ‘em. And we’re going to continue to show that. …
“It could be the Kansas City Chiefs or it could be the Miami Dolphins — I don’t want to use that as a comparison, but that’s just what it is. It don’t matter who we’re playing against, we’re going to go out and try to win every game.”
Hey, everyone knows the reality. The Chiefs are an elite Super Bowl contender, while the Lions are trying to put themselves even on the fringe of that conversation. There’s a gap between the two clubs who teed it up at Ford Field on Sunday, one that’s up to Matt Patricia & Co., to close.
There also is room to admit that the Lions played their butts off, despite being down a bunch of key pieces. They started Sunday with a hobbled Matthew Stafford and without Darius Slay (among others), only to lose Quandre Diggs early and then T.J. Hockenson in the second half, to a scary-looking concussion. The Lions’ offense stayed aggressive nonetheless, while the defense forced Mahomes to live on short and intermediate throws, essentially dragging this one out as far as Detroit possibly could.
The Lions were right there, one fourth-down stop from securing an impressive win. A good fight? A close call? A “moral victory”? Call it what you want, but the players afterward looked and sounded much like they did in Arizona back in Week 1, when they’d let a victory slip away.
“The NFL doesn’t do rankings,” running back Kerryon Johnson said. “Nobody cares at the end of the year if you almost beat the best team. There’s only one team happy, and in order to be that happy one you’ve got to beat other good teams.”
Johnson ran for a season-high 125 yards on a career-high 26 carries, but the play that hung with him was his third-quarter fumble at the goal line, which turned into a bizarre touchdown for the Chiefs. Almost everyone in the place thought the play was dead — the line judge appeared to be walking in with a spot, and the Lions actually had multiple guys trotting onto the field as substitutions for the next play.
Kansas City’s Bashaud Breeland scooped up Johnson’s fumble, though, and a handful of his teammates escorted him 100 yards to the opposite end zone. (The official explanation from NFL senior VP of officiating, provided via a pool report: “The officials ruled on the field that they did not see the ball carrier down. They did not see a body part other than the hand or foot down. The ball comes loose and then the ball was picked up by Kansas City, No. 21. He was not touched after he possessed the football. There was no whistle on the play, and he runs it back for a touchdown.”)
The crowd was rather boisterous in that moment, too, convinced Detroit had been handed the short end of the stick yet again. For Johnson, however, it was a mistake that shouldn’t have happened, one of many avoidable miscues the Lions made Sunday. Stafford’s fumble inside the Chiefs’ 10, the illegal-snap penalty ahead of a fourth-and-1, the assignment (or play-call) breakdown on Mahomes’ fourth-down scramble.
They all add up in a game this tight. And they’re all the more reason why the Lions weren’t in the mood for orange slices and runner-up trophies when the final whistle sounded.
“I don’t think we need to prove anything to anybody,” Stafford said. “… We’re a good football team. We lost to another good football team today. There were a bunch of great plays in this game, and a couple of bad plays by each team made in this game. That’s the way it goes in the NFL. It came down to the last 15 seconds. They were undefeated coming into this game, so were we. Somebody was going to have to lose. … It was a good opportunity to beat a good team and we were darn close.”
Did this loss feel different, somehow, than all the other Lions’ heartbreakers? In the moment, it did, maybe because the Lions are closer to becoming what they desire than they have been in the past.
Which is also sort of the point. When the Lions kept it tight against the Panthers and Steelers in 2017, or when they battled the Rams and Bears last season, they were punching up a class and it was obvious to everyone. Now, there’s at least a possibility — if you’re willing to be Charlie Brown with Lucy holding another kick for you — that this team itself is, well, pretty good.
The Lions didn’t gain a lot from pushing the Chiefs to the limit, because they think they should be winning these games.
“We responded well, but we just left too many plays out there,” Kennard said. “When you’re playing a really good team, some of the best teams in the league, you can’t leave all those extra plays out there. I feel like almost every player in this locker room, offensively and defensively, will feel like there’s a play or two we left out there. A couple of those plays go our way, that’s the game.”
Where this Lions season goes from here will dictate how we ultimately remember Sunday’s classic. Turn up out of the bye and roll over against the Packers and Vikings? Same old problems.
Build on what worked in Week 4 and start stacking together wins? Then everyone outside the locker room will believe what everyone inside it was preaching Sunday, that this wasn’t a matchup of contender and also-ran: It was a team that’s already arrived in Kansas City against a team, Detroit, that legitimately feels like it’s right on the cusp.
Moral victories? They’re meaningless. The Lions don’t want ’em, and they shouldn’t. Eventually, this team has to be better than that, and maybe the 2019 version still will be.
“Win is a win,” said cornerback Justin Coleman. “Loss is a loss, you know
INDIANAPOLIS — Jon Gruden wakes up everyday at 4 a.m. and pops in the game film because he knows the answers lie in the details.
The fiery speeches aren’t going to work that often. It’s all about calling the right plays and having the right players to carry them out.
The jet sweep he called for receiver Trevor Davis in the first quarter broke Sunday’s game open, and the Raiders are now 2-2 after holding on for a 31-24 win over the Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Gruden actually called the play way back on Wednesday. And when it counted Sunday, it went for a 60 -yard touchdown as the speedy Davis weaved around blocks down the sideline untouched.
“Coach told us (Saturday night), ‘Whoever gets this thing, I want to see 4.2 speed,” quarterback Derek Carr said. “And Trevor got it and took off.”
The Raiders took off for London later Sunday night with a spring in their step after Carr started off hot and the defense held on. The defense came through despite losing captain Vontaze Burfict to an ejection for a hit to the head early in the second quarter. Burfict usually gets his teammates in the right spots before the ball is hiked, but safety Erik Harris didn’t need any help reading quarterback Jacoby Brissett’s eyes in the fourth quarter. Harris’ 30-yard interception return for a touchdown gave the Raiders a 31-17 lead with 2:09 left.
“I’m as proud of this win as any one I’ve ever had before,” Gruden said.
The Raiders never make things easy on themselves, and Harris did subsequently give up a 48-yard touchdown pass to Eric Ebron. But that only meant that Josh “The Closer” Jacobs was needed for two nice runs of 7 and 5 yards to put the game on ice.
Besides Burfict, the Raiders also lost right guard Jordan Devey to a torn pec, and he was already filling in for Gabe Jackson. Denzelle Good came in for Devey. That was after David Sharpe had filled in for right tackle Trent Brown on a fourth-and-1 conversion when Brown missed a few plays with a hand issue.
Receiver J.J. Nelson was a late scratch because he apparently couldn’t get loose in the pregame warmups. That Davis gimmick play was actually drawn up for Nelson.
Carr took a late shot in the second quarter and played through it, but got X-rays after the game on his lower leg. There was nothing official from the team, but league sources said the results were good and there was nothing to worry about.
The Raiders are now 1-1 on this ridiculous five-game road trip that has them playing the Bears in London next Sunday. It’s a big part of why Gruden was so proud of his team after the game.
“Well, I think it’s a tough schedule that we have, honestly,” Gruden said. “There are a lot of difficult things that we’ve gone through. You show up today and the guy you’re counting on to play the ‘Z’ (receiver) position doesn’t play, your middle ‘backer gets thrown out … your right guard goes out, your right tackle goes out — there are a lot of reasons to fold your tent.
“There are a lot of reasons to start making excuses, but our guys were really resilient and tough mentally. And those are components that I think are going to serve us well as we continue to build our team. I’m really proud of these guys.”
One of the key building blocks is rookie defensive end Maxx Crosby. He played a lot more Sunday — while team sack leader Benson Mayowa vented on Twitter before the game about being inactive — and showed why. Crosby had two pass deflections at the line of scrimmage and he forced a fumbled that ended a Colts drive late in the second quarter.
“I feel like we all picked the intensity up in practice all week,” Crosby said. “We knew that we had to get a win and I felt the defense stepped up. It’s already a long flight, so going over there with a loss would have been terrible.”
The Raiders definitely took advantage of the Colts missing three of their best four players. Besides receiver T.Y. Hilton, Indianapolis was without linebacker Darius Leonard and safety Malik Hooker. So Carr and Jacobs took turns picking the defense apart.
Carr completed his first six passes for 53 yards as the Raiders marched down the field and went up 7-0 on an 18-yard touchdown catch by rookie tight end Foster Moreau. The play was designed for Darren Waller, but with safeties cheating toward the middle, Carr went to his other tight end on the right side of the end zone. Moreau went up and made a nice catch.
He was still holding the football when he boarded the team bus after the game.
“Yeah, it’s a spectacular moment,” Moreau said. “I imagined it a little different. I imagined having emotion when it happened. But it just happened and I was happy to be surrounded by my teammates.”
A little more than a minute later, it was Davis who was surrounded by teammates after he took the toss from Carr and turned the corner past three Colts defenders. That’s when he saw receiver Tyrell Williams make a block on the sideline, with right tackle Kolton Miller and Waller directing traffic up ahead.
“We saw evidence on film that it was going to be a big play,” Carr said. “And we saw a team run it against them a while back and we thought, ‘Oh, man, this could be a big play for us.’”
Gruden said Davis got one rep at the play. On Sunday morning.
The play “was for J.J. Nelson, honestly,” Gruden said. “J.J. was scratched. He showed up here today and couldn’t go — very disappointed in that. But the kid came in there … I think he (practiced) it in the walk-through, so I guess it does count, yes. In modern-day football, that’s a rep.”
Davis was untouched on the play and the last defender he saw ahead of him was Colts safety Clayton Geathers, whom Miller blocked and then passed off to Waller, who pushed him farther downfield as Davis scooted by.
“It was great downfield blocking,” Davis said. “I saw that there was one safety left. … Our whole team is great at blocking, so I knew after I saw that, it would most likely be a touchdown.”
Waller was looking for linebackers to block and didn’t see any, so he headed down the sideline. Just trying to keep up with the 325-pound Miller.
“Kolton was rolling,” Waller said. “He is pretty fast. You can’t run that play any better than that. We knew that defense flows to the ball like madmen, so we took advantage of that and called the play at the right time.
“It was great to get off a to fast start and then pound the rock and kill the clock in the second half. Showing that versatility is big for us, confidence-wise.”
The Raiders threw for 189 yards and ran for 188. If Gruden is going to take the blame for when the offense struggled after losing Antonio Brown, he should get the credit for a road win over a team that was 2-1.
Gruden was asked to explain how the Raiders got off to such a quick start.
“Well, it’s great coaching,” he said, smiling, as reporters laughed.
“It’s a credit to our coaches and our players and our preparation,” he said. “We travel first class, we get to stay in great hotels, we can get plenty of rest and take a lot of pride in our performance.
“I learned from Bobby Knight way back when I was a ballboy at Indiana: The first five minutes of each half usually set the tone for the entire game. So I thought we did a good job the first five minutes of each half today, and that’s a big reason we were able to win.”
(Photo: Michael Hickey/Getty Images)
The fiery speeches aren’t going to work that often. It’s all about calling the right plays and having the right players to carry them out.
The jet sweep he called for receiver Trevor Davis in the first quarter broke Sunday’s game open, and the Raiders are now 2-2 after holding on for a 31-24 win over the Colts at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Gruden actually called the play way back on Wednesday. And when it counted Sunday, it went for a 60 -yard touchdown as the speedy Davis weaved around blocks down the sideline untouched.
“Coach told us (Saturday night), ‘Whoever gets this thing, I want to see 4.2 speed,” quarterback Derek Carr said. “And Trevor got it and took off.”
The Raiders took off for London later Sunday night with a spring in their step after Carr started off hot and the defense held on. The defense came through despite losing captain Vontaze Burfict to an ejection for a hit to the head early in the second quarter. Burfict usually gets his teammates in the right spots before the ball is hiked, but safety Erik Harris didn’t need any help reading quarterback Jacoby Brissett’s eyes in the fourth quarter. Harris’ 30-yard interception return for a touchdown gave the Raiders a 31-17 lead with 2:09 left.
“I’m as proud of this win as any one I’ve ever had before,” Gruden said.
The Raiders never make things easy on themselves, and Harris did subsequently give up a 48-yard touchdown pass to Eric Ebron. But that only meant that Josh “The Closer” Jacobs was needed for two nice runs of 7 and 5 yards to put the game on ice.
Besides Burfict, the Raiders also lost right guard Jordan Devey to a torn pec, and he was already filling in for Gabe Jackson. Denzelle Good came in for Devey. That was after David Sharpe had filled in for right tackle Trent Brown on a fourth-and-1 conversion when Brown missed a few plays with a hand issue.
Receiver J.J. Nelson was a late scratch because he apparently couldn’t get loose in the pregame warmups. That Davis gimmick play was actually drawn up for Nelson.
Carr took a late shot in the second quarter and played through it, but got X-rays after the game on his lower leg. There was nothing official from the team, but league sources said the results were good and there was nothing to worry about.
The Raiders are now 1-1 on this ridiculous five-game road trip that has them playing the Bears in London next Sunday. It’s a big part of why Gruden was so proud of his team after the game.
“Well, I think it’s a tough schedule that we have, honestly,” Gruden said. “There are a lot of difficult things that we’ve gone through. You show up today and the guy you’re counting on to play the ‘Z’ (receiver) position doesn’t play, your middle ‘backer gets thrown out … your right guard goes out, your right tackle goes out — there are a lot of reasons to fold your tent.
“There are a lot of reasons to start making excuses, but our guys were really resilient and tough mentally. And those are components that I think are going to serve us well as we continue to build our team. I’m really proud of these guys.”
One of the key building blocks is rookie defensive end Maxx Crosby. He played a lot more Sunday — while team sack leader Benson Mayowa vented on Twitter before the game about being inactive — and showed why. Crosby had two pass deflections at the line of scrimmage and he forced a fumbled that ended a Colts drive late in the second quarter.
“I feel like we all picked the intensity up in practice all week,” Crosby said. “We knew that we had to get a win and I felt the defense stepped up. It’s already a long flight, so going over there with a loss would have been terrible.”
The Raiders definitely took advantage of the Colts missing three of their best four players. Besides receiver T.Y. Hilton, Indianapolis was without linebacker Darius Leonard and safety Malik Hooker. So Carr and Jacobs took turns picking the defense apart.
Carr completed his first six passes for 53 yards as the Raiders marched down the field and went up 7-0 on an 18-yard touchdown catch by rookie tight end Foster Moreau. The play was designed for Darren Waller, but with safeties cheating toward the middle, Carr went to his other tight end on the right side of the end zone. Moreau went up and made a nice catch.
He was still holding the football when he boarded the team bus after the game.
“Yeah, it’s a spectacular moment,” Moreau said. “I imagined it a little different. I imagined having emotion when it happened. But it just happened and I was happy to be surrounded by my teammates.”
A little more than a minute later, it was Davis who was surrounded by teammates after he took the toss from Carr and turned the corner past three Colts defenders. That’s when he saw receiver Tyrell Williams make a block on the sideline, with right tackle Kolton Miller and Waller directing traffic up ahead.
“We saw evidence on film that it was going to be a big play,” Carr said. “And we saw a team run it against them a while back and we thought, ‘Oh, man, this could be a big play for us.’”
Gruden said Davis got one rep at the play. On Sunday morning.
The play “was for J.J. Nelson, honestly,” Gruden said. “J.J. was scratched. He showed up here today and couldn’t go — very disappointed in that. But the kid came in there … I think he (practiced) it in the walk-through, so I guess it does count, yes. In modern-day football, that’s a rep.”
Davis was untouched on the play and the last defender he saw ahead of him was Colts safety Clayton Geathers, whom Miller blocked and then passed off to Waller, who pushed him farther downfield as Davis scooted by.
“It was great downfield blocking,” Davis said. “I saw that there was one safety left. … Our whole team is great at blocking, so I knew after I saw that, it would most likely be a touchdown.”
Waller was looking for linebackers to block and didn’t see any, so he headed down the sideline. Just trying to keep up with the 325-pound Miller.
“Kolton was rolling,” Waller said. “He is pretty fast. You can’t run that play any better than that. We knew that defense flows to the ball like madmen, so we took advantage of that and called the play at the right time.
“It was great to get off a to fast start and then pound the rock and kill the clock in the second half. Showing that versatility is big for us, confidence-wise.”
The Raiders threw for 189 yards and ran for 188. If Gruden is going to take the blame for when the offense struggled after losing Antonio Brown, he should get the credit for a road win over a team that was 2-1.
Gruden was asked to explain how the Raiders got off to such a quick start.
“Well, it’s great coaching,” he said, smiling, as reporters laughed.
“It’s a credit to our coaches and our players and our preparation,” he said. “We travel first class, we get to stay in great hotels, we can get plenty of rest and take a lot of pride in our performance.
“I learned from Bobby Knight way back when I was a ballboy at Indiana: The first five minutes of each half usually set the tone for the entire game. So I thought we did a good job the first five minutes of each half today, and that’s a big reason we were able to win.”
(Photo: Michael Hickey/Getty Images)