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Monday
Wide receiver Mecole Hardman, Jr., who caught the winning touchdown in last night’s Super Bowl, was an unlikely hero, given that he hadn’t caught a touchdown pass all year. In fact, up until this game, his season had been a disappointment.
This makes Mark Halliday’s poem “Wide Receiver” a fitting selection for today’s post, especially since it also features a quarterback who, like Patrick Mahomes, loves to pump fake. Also, like the quarterback in the poem, Mahomes spent much of the game dissatisfied “with what [he] saw downfield.” If we didn’t see the dazzling passing game from him that we might have expected, it’s because San Francisco did a good job of keeping him off balance while shutting down his receivers.
Not that his receivers would have admitted they were shut down. Like the player in the poem, wide receivers are famous for thinking that they’re always open. And in the end, Hardman was.
Wide Receiver
By Mark Halliday
In the huddle you said “Go long—get open”
and at the snap I took off along the right sideline
and then cut across left in a long arc
and I’m sure I was open at several points—
glancing back I saw you pump-fake more than once
but you must not have been satisfied with what you saw downfield
and then I got bumped off course and my hands touched the turf
but I regained my balance and dashed back to the right
I think or maybe first left and then right
and I definitely got open but the throw never came—
maybe you thought I couldn’t hang on to a ball flung so far
or maybe you actually can’t throw so far
but in any case I feel quite open now,
the defenders don’t seem too interested in me
I sense only open air all around me
though the air is getting darker and it would appear
by now we’re well into the fourth quarter
and I strongly doubt we can afford to settle for
dinky little first downs if the score is what I think it is
so come on, star boy, fling a Hail Mary
with a dream-coached combination of muscle and faith
and I will gauge the arc and I will not be stupidly frantic
and I will time my jump and—I’m just going to say
in the cool gloaming of this weirdly long game
it is not impossible that I will make the catch.
Further thought: I should have mentioned how one of the Chief receivers–though in this case not a wide one–was as frustrated as Halliday’s speaker in the first half of the Super Bowl. In the first half tight end Travis Kelce screamed at Chiefs coach Mike Holmgren that he wasn’t being used enough (he also bumped him to emphasize his point). Coach and quarterback adjusted took him seriously and Kelce dominated the second half with a game-high 93 receiving yards. “It is not impossible that I will make the catch” he could have said to Holmgren had he chosen to make his point more indirectly.