The Tampa Bay Buccaneers really went for it on their final play against the Buffalo Bills on Sunday. Down 30-27 and with the ball on their own 31 with nine seconds remaining and no time outs, the Bucs needed to do something spectacular to get the ball down the field and into field goal range.
The good news is Tampa did something spectacular. The bad news is that it was spectacular because they ran a really goofy play that featured a ton of laterals and went for a loss of yards to end the game.
Jameis Winston took a snap and threw a short pass to Adam Humphries. While it was a good idea to get a few yards and make an attempted bomb down the field a little easier, Humphries caught the ball in the middle of the field and didn’t have a chance to get out of bounds, even though he caught the ball with five seconds left.
So at this point, the laterals started. In all, we had 10 laterals. The play went for -2 yards.
The final play today in Buffalo… 😯 #TBvsBUF https://t.co/2Raz5eyFNu
— NFL (@NFL) October 22, 2017
The ball generally stays in the hands of skill position players, save for the time offensive lineman Donovan Smith got his hands on the ball and rumbled forward. Tampa just didn’t seem like it had all that much interest in blocking anyone, it was so bad that at one point, the ball got all the way back to the five-yard line.
Here is what the play looked like on ESPN’s official box score. It is fantastic.
The play itself took about 44 seconds from the snap to Marcell Dareus tackling DeSean Jackson, so looking at the play through the lens of “keep the game alive,” it was kind of well executed. The downside was that, you know, it went for -2 yards and the Bucs lost, so this will just go down as a very silly play that could have gone better.
