Daily Zoot - 9/17/09 - Fumble-Zoot-ski

The Daily Zoot is all the news you needed to know yesterday, soon
Last Monday night, with his Buffalo Bills clinging to a 5 point lead, return man Leodis McKelvin fielded a kickoff a few yards deep in his own end zone. Being the return man that he is, he tried to return it (go figure). He got to about the 20 when he started encountering some opposition. Patriots FS Brandon Meriweather delivered a big hit, but McKelvin stayed standing - which would prove to be his biggest mistake. Meriweather then teamed up with teammate Pierre Woods to strip the ball from McKelvin, and the Pats would recover. The Patriots would then march down the short remainder of the field and score in the final moments to win the game.

Buffalo had led for most of the contest, and the defeat was a heart-breaker for the whole city (can I call Buffalo a city? Isn't it just a slightly larger than normal group of people who have come together to try and use each others body heat to stay warm in an otherwise frigid upstate New York? Does that count as a city these days?). But people are going a bit too far in their treating of McKelvin. Recently, some Buffalo teenagers (is there a more angst ridden group of indivuduals than teenagers who are forced to live in Buffalo?) vandalized his front yard. I'll admit that he should not have taken the ball out of the end zone, and that once he did he should have done a better job at securing it, but we can't criticize a player for doing something that had it gone well we would be praising him for. If he had returned it for a touchdown, there wouldn't be a single word coming out that he should have knelt.

Last Thursday, everyone was on Hines Ward's case about potentially fumbling the game away on the four yard line after making a play that appeared to set up the game winning field goal. everyone clamored, "He should have taken a knee! Why doesn't he just take a knee!? Won't somebody stop him?!" His entire life, people have been telling Hines to get the ball in the end zone. But now he's supposed to go against his entire life of conditioning? The only thing on his mind is getting in the end zone, and frankly that's exactly what I would want from any of my players.

Taking a knee to preserve a win has only happened once that I can remember (Brian westbrook a few years ago) in recent memory. He was universally praised, but at the time people also couldn't believe his headiness; how could he possibly think to do this? What a smart play! But when the opposite happens, we expect that the athlete to go back on everything they know and make the play that's foreign to them.

I'm not saying that it is unreasonable to think that McKelvin could have taken a knee on that kickoff; and I concede that it probably did cost the Bills the game. I just don't think that you can get too angry at a player who is just doing everything he was ever taught, and trying as hard as he can to help his team win.