We all love big-man touchdowns, especially in a Super Bowl, so the miss in the second quarter from Tom Brady to offensive lineman Joe Haeg was quite unfortunate. Bruce Arians was trying to get tricky, and Haeg couldn’t bring it in, and the Chiefs wound up stopping the Bucs at the Kansas City one-yard line on fourth down for a crucial goal-line stand. Bucs score a touchdown there, it’s 14-3, and the Chiefs are in big trouble.
I would like to posit that the failure wasn’t the play itself — the failure was that the Bucs threw it to the wrong guy. Let’s get in the Wayback Machine to November 24, 2019, when Brady was back in Boston, Jameis Winston was still Tampa Bay’s quarterback, and THIS HAPPENED.
🚨 THIS IS NOT A DRILL 🚨
VITA VEA HAS HAULED IN HIS FIRST CAREER TOUCHDOWN pic.twitter.com/UXlButlO9H
— Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@Buccaneers) November 24, 2019
I guess we have to blame the Falcons for not picking up the F-Drag responsibility. Not that this was expected, per se.
Actually, the play was historic. Per Pro Football Reference, (via Football Perspective’s Twitter account), no player heavier than the 347-pound Vea has ever caught a touchdown pass in NFL history.
That’s Ravens Hall of Fame offensive tackle Jonathan Ogden, Bengals four-time Pro Bowl offensive tackle Willie Anderson, and ex-Bears defensive tackle William “The Refrigerator” Perry. We would concur with the suspicion regarding Perry’s listed weight, but one must go with what one has.
So, we’ll have to count this as a massive failure of self-scouting. The Bucs had the guy who had done this before in a historical sense, and they should have done it again.
