I heard someone say that Marcus Williams made the worst playoff defensive play in history the day after the Minneapolis Miracle happened. My gut instinct was to think “Naw, that’s just recency bias hyperbole”. But then I thought about it a little bit, and while I still feel like I have to be forgetting something…I can’t think of a worse defensive play in the playoffs.

Leon Lett sprung to mind, with his mistake against the Bills. But that fumble didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The Bills still got annihilated. This whiffed tackle literally cost the Saints the win. It directly lost the game. Yes, had he tackled Diggs, the Vikings may have won with a field goal, but the chances are much slimmer. Most great plays in the playoffs we think of as fantastic plays, not terrible ones. This is the worst defensive play I can think of off the top of my head. This poor dude is going to be fending off jokes and harassment about this play for the rest of his career, possibly his life. I genuinely feel bad for Marcus Williams. Also, I don’t want to take anything away from Diggs, he did everything right, and it was amazing.

At the same time holy shit what a finish. That’s one for the record books.

I’m super happy for the Vikings and I want them to win it all (A Jags/Vikes SB is my dream scenario, NE/PHI the nightmare) and it was nice to see the Vikings on the positive side of a miracle for once. I was all ready to write the choking comic for the Vikes but then…they swallowed! That was a bad way to put that.

Since I tend to write from the perspective of the victim with my jokes I spent a lot more time thinking about the Saints and Williams. We kind of forget that for all the Vikings playoff tragedy, the Saints have actually had quite a number of heartbreaks themselves. The Beastquake, the Catch 3, the Minneapolis Miracle. 3 of the best playoff moments of the last decade have come at the expense of the Saints and if they didn’t sneak in that SB win in ’09 we’d be talking about how snake-bitten this team is. When you have plays against you that are nicknamed, that stuff sticks around forever.

The Saints had a miracle of a season and shouldn’t feel too bad all in all. They have a recipe to keep Drew Brees around now (That run game, bah gawd) for at least a few years. We will likely see them again here soon. But in the meantime…way to blow it! Hahahahaha.

Instant classic. That was one of those games that reminds you of how good football can be.

EDIT: Some folks have reminded me of some other bad plays, namely the Tebow overtime TD against the Steelers and the Rahim Moore whiff against the Ravens. The Tebow play wasn’t great defense but I don’t think it was necessarily a mistake, more DT just outrunning a bad safety who possibly took a bad route, but I buy this argument enough. I don’t buy the Rahim Moore miss simply because while it was a bigger mistake, it didn’t directly lose the Broncos the game, just forced overtime.