I’m as unhappy with the muffed touchdown as anyone, but Mitchell’s penalty probably doesn’t cost us a TD. I’ve looked at the replay half a dozen times, and it looks to me as though Williams, the Ram’s defender, had pretty much diagnosed the run and would have in a position to impact the play if Mitchell hadn’t taken him out.
In a perfect world, Mitchell would have simply blocked his man. Same result, no flag. But, blocking doesn’t seem to be Mitchell’s forte. Of course, I have a hard time singling out AD for lacking those skills. There didn’t seem to be a single receiver on the field who could block a grandmother in a walker. At least three screens got blown up because three guys couldn’t manage to block a single defender and the play got blown up before it ever picked up steam.
After a game like this, it might be natural to look for scapegoats, and I’ll admit that AD’s head would look pretty good served up on a platter. But, you don’t build good teams by firing guys who make mistakes. They did that with Isaiah Rogers, who might not have shut down Nacua, but would surely have brought more to the field than the Colts Cornerback whose name I shall not speak.
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