In a game that will be tough to forget, the Buffalo Bills beat the elements and the Indianapolis Colts Sunday led by a fantastic performance by their star running back LeSean McCoy. McCoy who grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, looked like one of the few players who knew how to run in the snow (maybe from experience?) and delivered several big runs. No run was bigger than his 21-yard touchdown to win the game in overtime.
It was 3rd and 4 with 1:40 left in overtime, when Stephen Hauschka ran onto the field and it looked like the Bills were thinking about kicking a field goal on 3rd down, just in case any there were any problems with the snap. However, the offense stayed on the field and the Bills went home as the Kings in the north when McCoy produced the run shown below.
Dashing through the snow... pic.twitter.com/IQAeF6z7Y0
— YardsPerPass (@YardsPerPass) December 11, 2017
In watching the end-zone angle there are a few things to look at when watching this play. The first is that there is nothing magical about the play call itself, just a basic inside-zone run play with Groy in as a sixth lineman. The second thing is that the Colts have a free defender on the play (the safety, No. 41) and he stumbles and then just whiffs on McCoy. The key block to create such a huge hole is the double team with Incognito and Dawkins. Richie gives the defensive tackle a nice bump and then Dawkins just manhandles him on the turn. Richie then comes off and does a good job on the linebacker as well. This creates the huge hole for McCoy and after the whiff, it was game over.
As everyone who has played in snow football knows, you can’t really change direction so any type of misstep means you are toast. This was why you see the free safety coming in at the end having no shot, he took a wrong angle at first and had no chance to adjust.