DON’T DIGGS IT
Vikings WR's look-at-me TD run is epitome of modern NFL
EVEN the most exciting games now come with a price, a challenge to swallow what you can’t stomach. It’s the modern barter system: In order to enjoy, you must suspend your sense of common sense.
Has the last-play “hero” of any game ever looked like a bigger jerk than Vikings wide receiver Stefon Diggs did?
First, despite Diggs’ posttouchdown peacocking, the Vikings are not playing in the NFC Championship game because he “made a play” then “took it to the house” with :00 on the clock.
The Vikes are alive because of two, steadily regressive elements of fundamental football: 1) players’ pitiful unawareness of game and clock circumstances, and, 2) the continued replacement of tackling with risky attempts to cause a fumble or injury by using one’s body as a no-hands, often misguided missile.
And when Saints defensive back Marcus Williams performed the torpedo technique when a mere twoarmed wrap-up would have ended the game, he whiffed.
On FOX, Troy Aikman was flabbergasted, as if he couldn’t understand why Williams didn’t understand. But Aikman should by now know that such is modern football.
There was some recenthistory kismet at play in the play. It was the Saints, under incumbent coach Sean Payton, who in 2012 were hit with fines, suspensions and draft-pick losses for a “bounty” program that rewarded those who disabled opponents rather than merely tackling them.
Next, Diggs, after he reached the Saints’ 10-yard line, held the ball aloft with one hand, apparently with no sense of continuing history, beginning with Leon Lett in 1993. Diggs was eager to risk immortal infamy — dropping the ball while or after raising it, one-handed — in exchange for worthless self-aggrandizement.
But that’s modern pro football, too.
When Diggs was next seen at length, he was standing atop a sideline bench, posing before a crescent of photographers, no teammates in view, his arms folded and with a self-satisfied scowl on his face.
Yep, Diggs did it all by himself. And he left the rightheaded with the clear message that despite his talent, much like Odell Beckham Jr., among dozens of others, he’s tough to root for.
But that, too, is grimace- and-bear it modern football.
In Sunday’s earlier game, the Steelers may have won the first Roger Goodell Spontaneous Fun Trophy for most acts of individual gloating in a losing playoff game.
After wide receiver Eli Rogers ran for a first down off a shovel pass, he slowly rose to perform his allabout-me, first-down preen. That the Steelers were down, 21-0, the clock running, made no difference.
One would think that by now Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, among all coaches, would have schooled his troops on game and clock awareness.
After all, his Steelers nearly lost the 2009 Super Bowl because receiver Santonio Holmes, with Pittsburgh down three to the Cardinals, under a minute left and the clock running, decided to take a checkme-out downfield stroll after a catch-and-run. That forced the Steelers, with Ben Roethlisberger looking to go hurry-up and perhaps spike the ball, to call their last timeout.
Yet on CBS Sunday, Ian Eagle and Dan Fouts said nothing about the Steelers’ time-wasting demonstrations of self-affection, although such behavior surely struck increasingly disgusted and disaffected viewers — ratings are way down — as absurd.
Heck, after Pittsburgh’s Robert Golden blocked a Jaguars punt, he immediately began to run in selfcelebration — while the ball was still free.
But this is the modern game. The middle ground — the space between love it or left it — demands considerable and escalating sacrifice, starting with one’s suspension of indisputable common sense.