Sports
Mahomes Rules-Lawyered the Coin Toss Because the Colts Captain Never Did the Reading
By Michael Yappaport, . BSN Network. Satire.
The NFL changed its overtime rules. This was reported. It was covered on television, on the internet, in newspapers that still exist, and in team meetings where someone presumably had a whiteboard. That was over a year ago.
On Sunday, the Colts' captain walked to midfield for the overtime coin toss and, according to multiple reports, did not know what the rules were. Patrick Mahomes, who has played in more overtime games than most people have had rent crises, knew exactly what the rules were. He also knew that the other guy didn't. And he did what any competitor with ice water in his veins and absolutely zero interest in being nice about it would do: he used it.
Mahomes reportedly attempted to steer the Colts' captain toward a choice that would have been disadvantageous under the current format, leveraging the man's own ignorance against him at the coin toss, which is supposed to be the part of overtime that requires no preparation whatsoever. It is a coin. It goes up. It comes down. The complexity was added later by a committee, and apparently only one team's quarterback bothered to attend.
This is year two. Year two. The rule was not introduced at halftime of this game. The league did not slide a memo under the locker room door ninety seconds before kickoff. These men have had over a calendar year, a full offseason, a training camp, a preseason, and however many film sessions it takes to make a professional football player feel like he has prepared, and somehow the coin toss remains a knowledge gap large enough to drive a strategy through.
Elon Musk tweeted something about this, probably. Joe Rogan definitely has thoughts. Meanwhile, an actual NFL team captain stood at midfield in overtime and had to be corrected about the rules of the game he is paid millions of dollars to play.
Jim Irsay, the Colts' owner, who has never once in his professional life resisted the urge to have a public opinion about his own franchise, had not commented at the time of publication. This is actually more alarming than anything else in this story.
The current overtime format gives both teams a possession unless the team that receives the kickoff scores a touchdown on the opening drive. It is not the tax code. It is not a mortgage document. It is three sentences that any moderately attentive teenager watching from a couch in Indianapolis could have explained to the team captain before he walked out there.
Mahomes, for his part, looked like a man who had shown up to a knife fight against someone who thought it was still a handshake contest. He has five Super Bowl appearances. He is not at the stage of his career where he is learning the rules. He is at the stage where he is using other people's failure to learn them as a tactical asset.
The Colts captain's name is being withheld here not out of mercy but because if you are an NFL team captain and you do not know the overtime rules in year two of this format, the most humiliating possible outcome is being described only as "the Colts captain" in a story about Patrick Mahomes doing your homework for you and then using it against you.
The coin came down. The rules applied. One team knew them.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/patrick-mahomes-tried-to-take-advantage-when-colts-captain-didnt-know-ot-coin-toss-rule