Quarterback Throws Ball Twice, Ball Does Not Go Far Enough Either Time, Panel Convened
SMYRNA, Ga. — In what local sports observers are calling a significant evening for the sport of football, Atlanta Falcons quarterback Tua Tagovailoa took the field Friday night against the Denver Broncos and, over the course of two separate offensive possessions, neither scored nor retained possession of the football.
Both possessions ended in punts.
'A punt is when you kick the ball away,' explained Darren Hollis, Director of Football Outcomes at the Greater Cobb County Sports Understanding Council, speaking to reporters from a podium that appeared to have been set up specifically for this briefing. 'It is different from scoring. Scoring involves the ball going into the end zone. The ball did not go into the end zone. It went to a man who kicked it in the other direction. These are two different things, and our panel felt the public deserved clarity.'
Hollis paused to allow the room to absorb the information.
The Council, which was established in 2019 to provide explanatory services to local residents confused by professional sports outcomes, released a seventeen-slide presentation Saturday morning walking attendees through the sequence of events. Slide four featured a diagram of a football field with two large red circles indicating where Tagovailoa's drives concluded. Both circles were not in the end zone.
'The drives started here,' said Hollis, pointing to a blue arrow near the Falcons' own 25-yard line. 'They ended here,' he added, pointing to the red circles, which were also near the Falcons' own 25-yard line, or thereabouts. 'Distance was not gained in the quantity needed to produce a first down, which is ten yards, and eventually the coaching staff determined that kicking was the correct response to the situation.'
A reporter from the Smyrna Pennant-Observer asked whether this was bad.
'The Council does not characterize outcomes as bad,' Hollis replied. 'We characterize them as outcomes. This was an outcome. It occurred twice.'
Tagovailoa, who joined the Falcons this offseason following his departure from the Miami Dolphins, completed several passes during both drives, which experts confirmed is a component of the game of football in which the quarterback throws the ball to another player.
'He did throw the ball,' confirmed Sheila Murtagh, senior fellow at the Northwest Atlanta Football Literacy Initiative, who attended Friday's game in a professional capacity. 'The ball was caught on some of those throws. However, the yardage accumulated was insufficient. Yardage, for those just joining us, is a unit of measurement used in football to indicate how far the team has moved toward the end zone. More is better in this context.'
Murtagh noted that the preseason, which she described as 'the part of the football season that occurs before the football season,' is traditionally understood to be a period in which players are evaluated and game situations are simulated under low-stakes conditions.
'We want to be very clear that this was the preseason,' she said. 'The preseason is not the season. It precedes the season. The games in the preseason are, in the strictest technical sense, games, in that they involve two teams and a football and referees. However, they are categorically pre-season, meaning they come before.'
Audienced members nodded.
The Falcons declined to comment on the panel's findings, though a team spokesperson confirmed that Tagovailoa did, in fact, play in the game and that the game did, in fact, take place on Friday, which the Council noted was accurate and appreciated.
The Greater Cobb County Sports Understanding Council said it plans to monitor the situation through the regular season and will issue additional guidance as needed. A follow-up briefing has been tentatively scheduled for Week One, at which point, Hollis said, the drives will count.
'We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,' he said. 'A bridge, for context, is a structure used to cross an obstacle. That part is not within our purview.'