With time almost out and options dwindling, Carolina's Cam Newton tried to turn defeat into victory using a time-honored pull-it-out-of-your-back-pocket technique in the tradition of The Play.
You know The Play, right? Cal-Stanford, November 1982, five laterals and one flattened trombone as part of a last-second Cal victory. Here's a little refresher:
Eerie coincidence time: Panthers coach Ron Rivera was a member of that Cal team. So would history repeat itself?
Nope. Teams practice some variant of The Play, but there's a reason that it, and The Music City Miracle, and other similar freak events have their own names: they don't work very often. They tend to collapse like plays designed by ten-year-olds in the back yard, and that's exactly what happened here. The Cowboys, thanks to a fourth-quarter go-ahead drive engineered by Tony Romo — stop giggling, we're serious — beat the Panthers 19-14.
So, no luck for Newton this time. You know what would be wild? Doing one of those plays to start a game. Nobody would EVER expect that.
-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-