DENVER (AP) — Even the beneficiaries of Jonathan Taylor’s goal line gaffe couldn’t understand why anyone coasting in for a touchdown would let go of the football before crossing the goal line.
“I don’t get it, but I’m not going to try to,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said after Taylor’s 41-yard touchdown-turned-touchback allowed Denver to turn the blooper into a blowout.
“I don’t know, man. It was a big run in the game for a sure touchdown,” Broncos safety P.J. Locke said. “Because, I mean, he has some jets. On God, he has some freakin’ jets. And I just think he was already ready for his celebration.
“I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you. It’s an unfortuante play.”
For Taylor and the Colts (6-8), maybe, but a godsend for the Broncos (9-5), whose 31-13 victory snapped the franchise’s seven-year run of losing records and put them on the cusp of their first playoff berth since the 2015 season.
Taylor sliced through Denver’s defense for a 41-yard touchdown run in the third quarter but as the teams lined up for the extra point that would have given Indianapolis a 20-7 lead, the crowd went crazy watching the replay on the stadium’s giant scoreboard.
Referee Carl Cheffers announced the TD was under review.
“And I’m thinking, why are they reviewing it?” recounted Taylor, who, up to that point, had no idea he’d goofed up.
“No, you’re never consciously aware you’re dropping the ball,” Taylor said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t do it.”
The Broncos responded to the gift by closing the game on a 24-0 blitz after scoring just seven points in their first nine drives.
“I don’t know how it would have played out after that, but I do know we would have had six more points if I had crossed the goal line with that ball,” Taylor said.
Taylor was roasted on social media for his blunder, and it certainly didn’t help him that this was the first weekend of fantasy football playoffs.
In standard scoring leagues, Taylor, a star who gets the starting nod better than 99% of the time in fantasy football, would have produced a 10.1-point play had he held onto the ball a millisecond longer to complete his 41-yard touchdown run.
Instead, the 40-yard run and fumble produced just 2 points in fantasy football because he lost the six points for a TD, two more for a fumble and the .1 because that last yard didn’t count. That’s plenty enough wasted points for countless fantasy football players to have been eliminated from their playoff brackets.
Thus, the extra online outrage.
“That has never happened to me before,” Taylor said, “and it will never happen again.”
Taylor wasn’t alone in his misery Sunday. In Nashville, Cincinnati safety Jordan Battle thought he had a 61-yard fumble return for a touchdown until he dropped the ball just shy of crossing the goal line, just like Taylor did.
In October, Jets rookie receiver Malachi Corely did the same thing, erasing his first NFL touchdown. He has yet to reach the end zone.
Like Battle’s blunder, Corely’s brain lock didn’t end up mattering much because it didn’t cost his team a victory. Taylor’s blunder turned the game around in Denver, whose win all but snuffed out Indy’s slim playoff hopes.
Taylor, Corely and Battle join an ignominious club of pros whose goal line goofs live in infamy.
In 2008, Eagles rookie receiver DeSean Jackson celebrated a touchdown against the Cowboys by flipping the ball behind him — at the 1-yard line. The most famous goal line gaffe came during Dallas’ 53-17 blowout of Buffalo in the Super Bowl following the 1992 season when Don Beebe chased down 290-pound defensive lineman Leon Lett and knocked the ball out of his right hand as he held it out in premature celebration of a touchdown.
Taylor’s goof-up seems different because he’s not a defender or a rookie and his mistake was indeed consequential. Plus, Taylor is used to scoring touchdowns. He has scored 52 of them in his five-year NFL career after scoring 55 times in his three seasons at the University of Wisconsin.
As a running back, Taylor knows he should have known better.
“You go over those scenarios, but it just can’t happen,” Taylor said. “No matter the game, no matter the scenario, you could be up 50, down by 50, in a playoff game, the first game of the season. That should never happen.”
“You would think these offensive guys would hold onto the football getting through the touchdown nowaways,” Denver pass rusher Jonathon Cooper said. “But as you can see, it still happens. I just hope it never happens to us.”
Actually, it did happen to the Broncos back in the 2013 NFL opener when linebacker Danny Trevathan was about to score a pick-6 in his first NFL start when he dropped the ball as he approached the end zone and it was knocked out of bounds for a touchback.
Although it didn’t matter in Denver’s 49-27 rout of the Ravens that night, Trevathan got an immediate tongue-lashing from defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio, who admonished him to bring the football back with him if he ever happened to get into the end zone.
Trevathan did just that when he scored his first and only NFL touchdown on a 25-yard pick-6 of Philip Rivers’ pass two years later.
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