Happy 5th Anniversary to the Butt Fumble
Has it really been half a decade since the greatest single play in the history of professional tackle football? I guess it has, as hard as that is to process. I suppose those great, indelible moments in your life just have a way of staying with you. They’re part of your present. Always. Watching the Butt Fumble turn five is like seeing your kids grow up. No matter how old they get, it still feels like you just got them home from the delivery room yesterday.
It was just the perfect football moment. The night game on Thanksgiving, where you’re still so buzzed from booze and tryptophan that all the world is aglow and it’s the best viewing experience of the season. It was against the perfect team. The Jets had knocked the Patriots out of the playoffs two seasons earlier with one of the best game plans ever thrown at them in the Bradichick Dynasty. They’d been to two straight AFC championship games, as they liked to remind the world. But Rex Ryan and Mark Sanchez were just in the early stages of being humbled. Of turning back into the JETS. The ones that generations had grown up on. And this? This was their crowning moment.
I love this video for truly capturing what the Butt Fumble did for the great American institution of tabloid journalism:
What it did to establish Twitter as the world’s meeting place for instant reaction to world changing events. As well as recognizing their anniversaries:
And naturally, any play so perfect had to be immortalized with a Sports Science segment:
But more importantly, the ultimate tribute of a “Yakkity Sax” video:
So thanks to all who served to make this important Day of Remembrance possible. To Brandon Moore. To Vince Wilfork who shoved him two yards into the backfield. To Rex. Steve Gregory who finished it with the scoop and score. But mostly to Sanchize, without whom all of this would not have been necessary. Few men have ever left their mark upon the sport the way he did in this one shining moment.