You’ve probably never seen a field goal flub like this. Almost certainly not in the NFL.
In the first half of Monday’s 33-15 New England Patriots win over the New York Giants, the Giants had an early field goal try. Tight end Theo Johnson couldn’t hang on to a contested deep pass in the end zone from Jaxson Dart, so the Giants settled for a 47-yard field-goal attempt by Younghoe Koo.
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But there was one big problem with Koo’s field-goal effort. He failed to kick the ball. Instead, he kicked the turf. Seriously.
Here’s what it looked like via an overhead camera from the end zone. It wasn’t initially clear from that angle what happened. Koo wound up to kick the ball, and nobody from the Patriots got close, much less blocked it.
But the ball was never kicked, and holder Jamie Gillan scrambled with it before getting tackled behind the line of scrimmage.
“The ball just kind of slipped a little bit so [Koo] wasn’t sure if it was going to get set,” interim coach Mike Kafka said of the botched play. “Jamie tried to reset it and then by that time [Koo] was kind of already out of his groove on it so it was just a tough bounce there.”
The sideline camera angle told the story.
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Koo’s right toe planted in the turf a few inches behind the ball and got stuck. He never touched the ball. It was like a chunk shot with a pitching wedge that gets lodged in the dirt.
Dart looked on in disbelief as the Giants came away from the possession with no points.
The effort didn’t even count as an attempt in the box score. Instead, the Giants’ possession ended in a turnover on downs.
At least for Koo, he didn’t get hit with a miss in the stat book. But that wasn’t of much solace for the Giants, lost in blowout fashion to the Patriots to fall to 2-11 on the season.
