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I’m not sure we’ll ever see another game end the way Patriots-Raiders did.And its beauty, of course, was in the chaos of its unexplainable, inexplicable final play.
The truth, though, is there was a very real method to what happened at Allegiant Stadium.
First, let’s set the scene. The Raiders had blown a 17–3 halftime lead, after already holding the record (four) for most double-digit leads squandered in a season. The Patriots scored 21 consecutive to take their first lead at 24–17 with 3:43 left. The teams then traded three-and-outs, and the Raiders went on a nine-play, 81-yard touchdown drive to tie it at 24 with 32 seconds to go. New England got the ball back and moved it 20 yards in five plays.
That set up third-and-10. New England 45. Three seconds left.
And the kind of situation the Raiders refer to as “Desperado.”
“The Desperado situation is usually when a team is trying to lateral the ball and advance it to score,” Chandler Jones tells me, just after getting home from the stadium Sunday night. “They’ll use it at the end of the half or a game …”
By now, you know the result. Jones more or less picked off the lateral, shoved Patriots quarterback Mac Jones to the ground, got to the end zone and the Raiders won, 30–24.
What you might not understand is how and why it started.
Jones was actually following rules in getting to the landmark he did. At the snap, Patriots RB Rhamondre Stevenson took the handoff on a draw. At the Raiders’ 45, Jones dove at him and tried to punch the ball out. Stevenson burst upfield past him. As Jones picked himself up off the field, a Desperado situation started to unfold. Stevenson ran through the Las Vegas defense all the way inside the Raiders’ 35, then flipped the ball to his right to WR Jakobi Meyers.
“So when I saw they started doing the whole hot-potato thing, I stood up immediately and started trying to spot-up who was the next guy that’s behind the line of scrimmage, who could he pitch back to next,” Jones says. “And I was just like, because they could be throwing to someone back here and he could be fast enough to score.”
And then, Jones’s rules kicked in.
“We would always have a man assigned to the deepest skill player on the field,” Raiders coach Josh McDaniels texted Sunday night. “Chandler was doing his job.”
Jones’s man? It wound up being Mac Jones.
After figuring that out, the job got easier.
“Talking in basketball terms—I’ll go box someone out,” Chandler Jones says.
So Chandler Jones “boxed out” Mac Jones, essentially making himself a wall between the quarterback and the ball. He wasn’t really expecting Meyers to throw it all the way back to Mac. And he definitely wasn’t expecting to have a play like that on the ball. But there he was, and here the ball came. Chandler caught it clean, and immediately went to work, with his first move being one on the Patriots quarterback.
“I don’t think I’ve thrown a stiff arm in practice,” Jones says, laughing. “When I caught the ball, he was there, I was thinking, I don’t know, maybe I could outrun Mac Jones. But whenever defensive players are running for touchdowns, they always get made fun of for getting caught by the quarterback. So I thought, . Because there were guys behind me.”
Their services wouldn’t be needed. After discarding Mac, Chandler Jones covered the rest, cruising to the end zone to put away the victory.
The interesting thing, per Jones, is that captains and leaders in the huddle actually told the guys, . And, Jones admits, he was just lucky enough to be the one where the ball was thrown. “I was blessed,” Jones says. “I was blessed to be there.”
After he scored, Foster Moreau offered to take the ball off Jones’s hands for the time being. Jones then went looking for it in the locker room. Moreau told him he gave it to McDaniels. McDaniels then gave it back to Jones as he was presenting game balls and addressing the team. At which point, Jones gave it back to McDaniels.
“And he can keep it if he wants,” Jones says. “I’m more happy about the play.”
So are a lot of other people in Vegas who, like the rest of us, never saw anything like it, and may never see anything like it again.
