Best as I can tell, the autograph reads, "LG -- Brothers for Life!"
His stats were great and he made all the plays, but in truth, none of his 3 TOs was very difficult. Rowe's play was outstanding. Butler was in the right place all the time which is also important, but the balls came to him.
I'd say in order of difficulty the Rowe pick was the hardest, though the first Butler pick wasn't that far behind, he had to kind of turn back and bat it to himself while running full speed. The 2nd pick and the fumble recovery were pretty straightforward.
Might as well get it out of the way here, that's a 1 in 8, or 12.5% chance thing.
In addition to his great day, I saw his Papa John's commercial with Antonio Brown today. Good for him.
The one White dropped was even better, on the TD White had to slow down just a smidge(not saying it wasn't a great throw, I'm really picking nits), the other one was absolutely perfectly on stride to his outstretched hands.
It's crazy. I remember thinking two years ago that the pick would destroy him. I was imagining a 45 year old guy signing autographs in a Ramada lobby, "the pick, Malcolm Butler." I was grateful he made that play, but did not think it really possible for an undrafted guy to come out of nowhere, make the most dramatic play in football history, and then just go back to the grindstone and put in the work to make himself an NFL regular, let alone an elite player. He's a special fucker. He's why I watch sports.
Thanks, both. Indeed, I do remember Reiss doing snap counts and should have thought to check there but I'm still in holiday over-eating food coma!
I think he's kicking it into the end zone more often on kickoffs instead of trying to kick it to the 2. I suspect that in the past he used to boom it through the end zone all the time, and the switch to taking a little something off on kickoffs this year messed with his mechanics a bit. I noticed he was booming it deep more often and he came out of his slump right around the same time.
If you want to set up the tee at the 20, you could have a glorious Busby Berkeley-style synchronized team twerk after a TD and take the 15 yard penalty for excessive celebration. Nothing exceeds like excess.
I'm relying on memory, which is an uncertain bet, but I recall his kicks going more or less down the middle, with little or no drifting. Previously, the kicks seemed to wander erratically, more to the right than the left perhaps.
And it's possible he had some kind of injury, which is often the best explanation for all kinds of sports underperformance.
If you can voluntarily put the tee behind the 35 and kick farther, surely there would still be nothing preventing the kick coverage team from lining up on the 35 at the same time.
