Put yourself in Taylor Heinicke’s shoes.
You’re 25 years old. You’ve been on four NFL teams in the past three seasons; the extent of your playing career has been nine snaps with the Texans in a blowout loss to the Steelers on Christmas Day last season – time is winding down on the first half of your team’s seventh game of the season in which Cam Newton, whom you’ve been backing up all season, has led the Panthers to a 21-7 lead; with five seconds to go, your head coach turns to you and tells you they want you to run onto the field and heave it sixty yards. What do you do?
You get out there.
“I was ready to throw it as far as I could and hopefully, maybe Funch or somebody could come down with it in the end zone,” said Heinicke with a grin after the game. “But it kind of worked out better.”
Instead of heaving a Hail Mary to finish out the half, Heinicke hit Greg Olsen for a 13-yard completion that only took three seconds off the clock to set up a 54-yard field goal from Graham Gano that capped a wild sequence; what follows is an oral history of the events that began with eleven seconds left in the first half.
Greg Olsen: That was one of the craziest plays I’ve ever been a part of.
Taylor Heinicke: It was a little chaotic there.
The Panthers faced a third-and-2 when Cam Newton’s attempt at picking up the first down fell incomplete – the offense began to come off the field, the special teams unit stood ready if necessary, but as the play clock ticked down, eventually, the Panthers took a delay of game to make fourth-and-2 a fourth-and-7 at the Baltimore 49-yard line.
Graham Gano: I think we were facing a sixty-something yarder – that direction was tough. I looked over and I said, ‘it’s going to be a really difficult kick from here.’ Obviously, you want to put the team in the best position, you don’t want to say ‘Yeah, I can make this kick,’ when in reality, the conditions might not help you out that much.
Ron Rivera: Chase Blackburn told me prior to that there was crosswind coming through on that side and he wasn’t as accurate from that [direction]. We wanted to throw the Hail Mary initially, but Cam didn’t want to throw it. He didn’t want to strain himself out there, in all honesty. So Scott Turner suggested we put Taylor out there.
Taylor Heinicke: Obviously, Cam, not practicing all week, shoulder a little sore – he didn’t feel like he could get it there.
Ron Rivera: He didn’t want to strain himself throwing it and take a chance hurting himself. He came to the sidelines and told us and I’m going to listen to what my players have to tell me. I thought it was a heck of a decision by him, just being upfront.
Cam Newton: For me not being in there, it was just a feel thing and I knew how I was feeling at that time and I felt that Heineken put our team in the best situation.
Taylor Heinicke: Scott [Turner] and [Ron] Rivera just looked at me real quick and were like ‘Go sling it!’ They just threw me in there and I was like ‘Alright, here we go’ – so I was going to try and throw a sixty yard bomb with no warmup; I’m kind of happy that didn’t happen because it might have been pretty ugly, but it worked out perfectly for us.
Donte Jackson: We see this from Taylor all week long – Taylor is a playmaker, Taylor is a guy who has ice water in his veins and he knows what he’s dealing with being a backup to Cam – his number was called and we’ve got the most confidence in Taylor.
Greg Olsen: We were torn between kicking a field goal, the wind was crazy, throwing a Hail Mary. Then we decided to go Hail Mary with Taylor, we got lined up and all of the sudden the guy that was out on me started walking in to rush the passer, so I just started screaming for Taylor.
Taylor Heinicke: I looked at the play clock and it’s at 15 seconds, and I’m like ‘Shit!’ So I run out there, I’m getting everyone set up and there’s about four seconds left and I snap it and I see eight guys running at me – I was like, I’ve got to get rid of it. [Olsen] is screaming at the top of his lungs, ‘Taylor! Taylor!’ When Suggs left [Olsen], I was like OK, this might be an easy shot right here.
Ron Rivera: I’m not going to take credit for a couple of guys playing very smart football; those guys deserve all the credit, both Taylor Heinicke and Greg Olsen.
As the Ravens sent a blitz, Heinicke hit Olsen, who sped out of bounds for a 13-yard gain.
Greg Olsen: It was wide open and Taylor…I don’t know if he heard me or if he saw the same thing. I didn’t really do anything, I just kind of flowed off the line and you’ve just got to try and catch it and then obviously it’s a race to get out of bounds. I knew we had five seconds, so I thought we needed like three yards right? I don’t know how many yards we ended up getting, we needed two or three. So we didn’t have a far way to go to get Graham kind of over the hump.
Graham Gano: Taylor did a great job of getting that little extra yardage and I feel like it was flawless.
Taylor Heinicke: All I know is I was pumped and then I look back and Cam is running onto the field to congratulate me, so it was chaotic – a chaotic 30 or 45 seconds. Graham with the kick – kudos to him, because if he didn’t make that kick, it wouldn’t have mattered – so it was pretty chaotic, but it worked out for us.
Graham Gano: Those are fun moments, those are things that you train for and you prepare for and when it actually happens in a game, it’s exciting.
Clip via NFL Game Pass.
