Football has long been known as a game of inches. Last week, the Saskatchewan Roughriders showed it can also be a game of seconds. With just over a minute to go in the first half of Saturday's game against Hamilton, the Riders were facing a second and seven situation at the Tiger Cats 26-yard line. The Green and White broke their huddle and, 26 seconds later, scored their second touchdown. Breaking down those 26 seconds, there's a lot to digest.
Tommy Nield caught the touchdown pass from Trevor Harris and says that communication was a huge part of the sequence of events.
“The first part of that play, we do a dummy waggle to get the defence to move and see what kind of coverage we're gonna get. After that, Trevor makes the adjustment. We communicate it to all the receivers and then ball is snapped and we're rolling. The play he had checked to, we ran it a bunch of times before. But the key part of it is the communication across the board and usually when everyone's on the same page, that's when good plays happen.”
That communication included the offensive lineman pointing and Nield turning his head to talk to another receiver which he says started with the quarterback.
“Yeah, it’s like Trevor communicates it and instantly it’s like telephone. You’re telling the dude next to you what the play is, making sure we’re all on the same page so that when the ball’s snapped, we’re playing fast.”
Now the fun part of the campfire game telephone is that you mix the message up and you don’t understand it at the end but clearly that didn’t happen according to Nield.
“It’s not like telephone in that way. You definitely don’t want to tell them the wrong thing. So it’s like a telephone game, but you’re actually being told the right message every time.”
So here’s to the game of telephone around the campfire. It can lead to touchdowns in just 26 seconds.
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