Rubio hits kid with football, becomes meme

A video of Sen. Marco Rubio playing football caught fire on Twitter on Tuesday. The crux of the clip: Rubio accidentally hits a little boy in the face while throwing a football.

The failed pass happened Monday night when Rubio, in Iowa with his family for the state fair, was throwing the pigskin with his sons and some neighborhood kids at an event in an Ankeny subdivision.

The pass, it should be said, was a fairly clean spiral from Rubio. However, it just missed the boy’s hands and then collided with his face.

The kid, the Rubio campaign said, was fine.

Rubio addressed the failed pass Tuesday night in response to a tweet from ESPN.

The tweet from ESPN read, “This pass from presidential candidate Marco Rubio wasn’t terrible … but it sure didn’t end well for the receiver.”

Rubio responded: “The QB always gets the blame.”

The clip earned some Twitter snark.

@ron_fournier Let me guess: Roger Goodell leaked you false information about the PSI of Rubio's football. — Andrew Boucher (@AndrewBoucher) August 18, 2015

Worst Florida sports performance since the Rose Bowl. https://t.co/8hsuswfOLb — Brett Friedman (@BA_Friedman) August 18, 2015

WHY TRUMP COULD WIN: Rubio will apologize to the kid. The Donald would tell him he should develop better hands https://t.co/gS0C7lNjFP — JustinGreen∞ (@JGreenDC) August 18, 2015

Trump would have called a press conf and explained that the kid is a loser https://t.co/GwpIh7Em5j — Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) August 18, 2015

Rubio’s no stranger to viral videos. His water grab-and-chug moment while delivering the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address quickly evolved into “bottle-gate.”

Eliza Collins contributed to this report.

Follow @politico