This story appeared in ESPN The Magazine's Dec. 4, 2017 issue.

It's Nov. 22, 2012, a crisp, still Thanksgiving night inside MetLife Stadium. Surrounded by 79,088 fans, Mark Sanchez crouches confidently under center at the 31-yard line, his team down 14-0 with 9:10 to play in the second quarter. For a split second, while staring across at the Patriots' defense and waiting for the snap on first down, everything is still possible for Sanchez and the Jets. The game is still up for grabs. A captive national audience is still tuned in. Sanchez still has franchise-quarterback potential. Rex Ryan is still the mastermind who will guide New York's other football team out of a four-decade malaise.

And then everything changes. Sanchez opens to his left, and fullback Lex Hilliard, who is supposed to get the handoff, flashes by on his right. Sanchez's momentum carries him 5 yards into the backfield, where he pivots in his black throwback high-top cleats and begins blindly sprinting toward the chaos at the line of scrimmage. With each step, a perfect storm begins to form -- of characters, setting, audience, nomenclature and the burgeoning power of social media -- that will produce a blunder of such magnitude that it would survive the ultimate benchmark for the greatest bloopers in sports: the test of time.

"It all went wrong when Sanchez turned the wrong way," Ryan says. "That was the first indication that it was going to be a bad play. But we had no idea it was going to be a disaster."

In mere seconds, the history of the Jets cleaves into two distinct eras: everything Before the Butt Fumble (BBF) and everything after (ABF). So to commemorate its fifth anniversary, ESPN presents the definitive oral history of the best worst play in football.

The play

Greg McElroy, Jets third-string QB, 2012: We had a simple fullback dive called 30 Dive. Our halfback dive was called 20 Dive. All Mark's steps and footwork were great ... for 20 Dive. The actual play was to the right, though. Mark got under center, had a little snafu and was thinking 20 Dive -- just open to the left and hand it to the halfback. That's when he realized the halfback had already flared out, the fullback had gone through the hole and it was actually 30 Dive.

Hilliard, Jets fullback, 2012: It was botched from the beginning. I was supposed to get the ball on that play. Thirty Dive happens so quick -- when you open up and the ball's not there, you know something went bad.

Ryan, Jets head coach, 2009-14: You always teach a quarterback, "Don't make a bad play worse." Well, we made it worse. I don't know what [Sanchez] was doing, man. It was just a disaster. When everybody's blocking it a certain way and you go the other way, that's a bad combination.

Joe Namath, Hall of Fame Jets QB, after the game: It's mind-boggling. Are your eyes closed? You don't see where you're going? I don't know. I really can't relate to that. I just can't tell you what's going on in Mark's mind when he admits to having thought of another play when he turned out the wrong way. I don't know where his head is, man.

Mike Carey, NFL referee, 1990-2013, officiated the game: They were zone-blocking, so there was just no hole anywhere. My primary job is to watch the quarterback. Sanchez's mind was racing with the thought of "How can I get out of this?" and he had tunnel vision looking for a tiny rabbit hole to escape through. He was going to cut it back or slide, and he got caught in indecision and -- bang -- he runs into the biggest, most obvious thing right in front of him.

Steve Gregory, Patriots safety, 2012-13: We were in a three-deep zone coverage. And based off the formation, we're going to drop one of the safeties into run support. It happened to be me. You can read the quarterback. Mark turned around with this look of panic, like, "What do I do now?" I'm coming down for run support, keeping the ball on my inside shoulder. He probably sees me and he tries to cut it back up inside.

McElroy: Mark follows the fullback, and our fullback kind of sold down on the play, and [then-Patriots defensive tackle] Vince Wilfork literally throws our guard Brandon Moore right at Mark, and I mean hard. Mark was kind of jogging, and it was Moore getting thrown back into Mark, which caused him to go backward and the ball to become dislodged. It was like getting punched in the face by a 300-pound glove. People who know the game saluted Wilfork for what he did as much as they condemned Mark. Wilfork was unbelievable, such a beast.

Ryan: I get pissed about this play because Brandon Moore's in it. For a lot of years, he was probably the best guard in football and nobody had heard of him. He was legit. That year, that offseason, he had literally had both hips replaced. Probably never should have played, but he did. He gutted it out. On that play, Brandon does a great job, gets his block, knocks the guy off, and then Sanchez turns the wrong way. I don't think people realize what a good guard he was. They just remember he's the guy that had the Butt Fumble.

Rich Cimini, ESPN's Jets beat reporter: That's going to be in [Moore's] football bio, the Butt Fumble, and I know Brandon just hates it. It's unfair that he's linked to that. He's a proud, stubborn, grouchy guy, and he was offended by it. He called it the weirdest play he had ever seen and complained about how the littlest things turn into internet sensations. But he has not come around the Jets at all since he retired. It's weird.

Gregory: It's "What came first, the chicken or the egg?" Moore's getting driven back, Sanchez has his eyes closed running forward and there's a collision. Wilfork was a man-child out there, especially in run support, and he just drove that lineman back, and Sanchez somehow found Brandon Moore's butt as a landing spot. Mark face-planted into the back of Brandon Moore's butt.

The Impact

Cimini: It was a big target, though; Brandon had a pretty big butt.

Carey: [Sanchez] just went weightless. The collision was really hard. Think about running into a brick wall that's almost 700 pounds of force. That will knock the sense out of anybody.

John Brenkus, ESPN's Sport Science host: They collided with more than 1,300 pounds of force. That's more than 10 times the force needed to cause a fumble.

Cimini: As soon as it happened, I turned to [ESPN writer] Ian O'Connor and said, "I can't believe this, but I think he just ran into his ass!" So we all watched the replay and it was like, "Yep, he really did." I've covered the Jets for 29 years, and this was the craziest thing I've ever seen. People were just aghast in the press box, even the Patriots writers.

Sanchez (in 2012): It's embarrassing. You screw up the play, and I'm trying to do the right thing. It's not like I'm trying to force something. I start to slide, and I slide in the worst spot I possibly could -- right into Brandon Moore. That sucked.

Brenkus: Moving at nearly 10 mph, Sanchez spots the safety covering the outside lane. As he changes his vector to an inside lane, he realizes a collision is imminent and instinctively raises his arm to brace for impact. This leaves the ball vulnerable.

Cimini: If that had happened today, he'd be in concussion protocol. There was some concern about his neck or whiplash or something, but he played the rest of the game and it was actually one of his better games of the year. He had a passer rating over 90 [94.8], although no one will remember that part.

Carey: Mark goes straight down, flops onto the ground. His body language was, "God I wish I could disappear" -- just total despair. He felt completely helpless. Someone was pinned on his legs and his upper body was open, so I thought he'd reach for the ball, but then he just kind of flopped over, head straight down into the turf, arms straight out on the turf. It was total despair.

The Fumble

Gregory: I'm dropping down, and I couldn't really tell where Sanchez was because you got these big guys in front of you and you're trying to figure out where the ball is. I come around the left side, and all of a sudden I'm standing there and the ball is just bouncing in front of me. I scoop it up and start running. It's almost like it happens in slow motion. You don't hear the crowd. You're just cruising into the end zone, going, "What the heck just happened? Did I really just score?" I'm a guy who grew up in New York City. All my friends and people I grew up with are mostly Jets fans. To have that type of play and that type of game in my backyard, I'll remember that for the rest of my life.

Sanchez (in 2012): I guess I was more stunned than anything. It was just like a car accident. I was like, "Whoa, what just happened, the ball is gone?" It was weird, man.

Hilliard: None of us knew it was off the butt. We just thought it was a regular fumble. Experiencing these plays is a lot different on the field as a player. We don't see it over and over like you do on TV. You know something bad happened by the sound of the crowd. The crowd just erupted, and I looked up at the JumboTron and the ball's going the other way. He was gone. All our receivers and backs are downfield, and we all have our backs to the play. No one was catching him. He was already prancing in the end zone when I finally turned to see what had happened.

Stephen Gregory Sr.: We were in the stands screaming and jumping up and down, and before he even got to the end zone we were yelling, "He's gonna get the Madden turkey leg!"

Hilliard: On the sideline after the play, I started thinking, "Was it my fault? Did I go the wrong way?" Everyone's going over what the playcall was and eliminating whose fault it was. The last thing you want to do is have it be your fault, especially on a play like that. You're embarrassed by it, and Mark, bless his heart, he took the brunt of the heat on the whole deal.