INDIANAPOLIS -- On one hand, it'll appear to be the easiest splash play in football history.
Chris Wormley advances off the Indianapolis edge without being defended at all, arrives just in time for Jonathan Taylor to fumble Matt Ryan's handoff, then seizes control of the ball from a 37-year-old who's scarcely capable anymore of clinging to his NFL career.
All the gifts wrapped in a single bundle:
And yet, when this sequence quashed an 87-yard drive, one that saw a field goal willfully erased from the scoreboard, one that probably was the pivoting point in the Steelers' 24-17 victory over the Colts on this Monday night at Lucas Oil Stadium, what might've stood out more than anything about it was ... well, how hilarious Wormley was in assessing it for me.
"Yeah, man, they're usually pretty good at the goal line when it comes to punching it in with Taylor," he'd say. "But I know we know that he's a big fumbler. Fumbled a lot in college. Fumbled a lot and in the pros. And to me, it looked like it was kind of a mishandling of the snap between the quarterback and him, and I kind of saw that from the corner of my eye."
Meaning he'd been angling toward Taylor, then spun back when he saw the ball pop toward Ryan.
"Right. And I just kind of leaped on it."
After which ...
"I mean, if I lose a battle between Matt Ryan and me for the ball, I might just hang it up now, honestly. He was fighting for it, but I mean, I had a pretty good grip on it, And I was going to lay there until they took everyone off, and I'd have the turnover."
Master-class in NFL trolling right there, kids.
Ryan, as one might expect, wasn't laughing about the play, though he smartly stopped miles short of faulting Taylor even though he was credited with the fumble lost for some bizarre reason.
"It didn't feel clean," he'd say of the exchange. "But I'd have to take a look at what happened.”
Taylor didn't exactly bail out Ryan, saying, "We just gotta get that executed. Definitely gonna look at the film tonight to see if there's anything I could've done better. I'm sure he'll look at it, too. But in that area, down by the goal line, we both gotta find a way."
That's what Wormley did. Just ask him.