BAD BEATS: NFL WEEK NINE

BY ADAM GREENE

We’ve all run into a Bad Beat. Sometimes we stumble into them. Other times they hit us like a bike messenger in a hailstorm. There’s never any way to expect it.

I myself was plunked with a solid stinger that felt bad, regardless of how it played out, when I took the Arizona Cardinals at -6 over the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins ended up winning 34-31. The pain was real.

But absolutely nothing like what Houston Texans bettors were feeling when the Jacksonville Jaguars nearly pulled off an upset, falling 27-25. And that makes it our unquestioned Bad Beat for the week.

First off, we have to set the stage to what we were dealing with coming into this game. The Texans were a -7 favorite, which seemed low since the Jags were starting a rookie quarterback, Jake Luton, who had never thrown a professional football pass. More than that, Luton, the last time he did throw a pass in college for Oregon State, broke his back. That wasn’t even a calendar year ago.

Jacksonville hasn’t been a scoring machine this year even with starting QB Gardner Minshew under center. They put up 29 against the Los Angeles Chargers last week, sure, but scored just 16 against the Detroit Lions the week before that. The last time the Texans and Jags squared up, they were held to just 14 points. This line looked very comfortable.

So comfortable in that, you laid down your hard earned cash with the plan to turn it into one of those $1,295 Canada Goose Expedition Parkas people were getting shot over a few years ago. With your mask on, neither cold nor COVID-19 is getting through that Grizzly Bear hazmat suit.

You had their website in your browser as the game kicked off, trying to decide if you were going with a classic green or something that really stood out like a red. I mean, white was on the table. You were going to look like Snow Job from G.I. Joe in that bad boy. It was a dream that, until Sunday, you didn’t even know you had.

Then, on the third play from scrimmage, disaster struck. Luton dropped back on a third and eight and fired a deep pass to wideout D.J. Chark for a 73-yard touchdown. It was only Luton’s second attempt of the game. And it hit paydirt.

But all wasn’t lost. This could have very much been a blind pig and truffle situation. He got lucky. Houston was playing short, looking for the quick dump off and the kid caught them precisely because he had no clue what he was doing. Right?

The Texans scored the next 13 points and all appeared right with the world until Luton did it again, working his team down the field with a game-tying 12 play, 75-yard drive capped with a one-yard James Robinson run.

The game was back and forth at that point as the “Any Given Sunday” mantra was proven emphatically once again, as was the fact that guys like Luton, regardless of their draft pedigree or name recognition, have jobs in the NFL for a reason.

Midway through the third quarter, Houston got itself some solid distance with Deshaun Watson firing his own 77-yard TD pass to Will Fuller to go up 27-16. The Jaguars opened the fourth with a field goal, but you still had an eight-point cushion. And for the next nine minutes and 29 seconds,you kept it.

Until Luton, using muscles attached to the very spine he’d fractured less than 365 days ago, trotted into the end zone for a 13-yard touchdown. The Jags were down by two and here your demeanor completely changed. After spending the whole game rooting against Jacksonville, you now had to root for them. They had to get the two-point conversion to make the Texans keep playing or force the game to overtime. Of course, when your allegiance switched, so did the Jaguars’ luck. Luton’s pass to Chark fell incomplete, robbing you of your chance to spend the winter cosplaying as Sergeant First Class Harlan W. Moore of the G.I. Joe Special Missions Force as you wandered the coronavirus apocalypse.

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