Sometimes the worst moments are the ones we remember best.
Today in 2012, football fans got to see one of the most spectacularly wrong plays in NFL history.
It’s known today simply as “the butt fumble.”
It was a particularly bad time to be part of a particularly bad play.
This day in 2012 was Thanksgiving Day, and millions of fans were watching the game between the New England Patriots and the New York Jets.
The Pats were in the middle of the Tom Brady era; they could essentially do no wrong.
As for their opponents, that was not the case; the Jets would finish the season with a record of 6-10 and any football watchers who had once thought they could be legitimate contenders in the AFC East were now writing them off.
By the second quarter of this game, New York was already trailing 14-0.
The offense came back onto the field, hoping to answer back with a touchdown.
Quarterback Mark Sanchez was trying to hand off the ball to fullback Lex Hilliard, but he turned to the wrong side.
Realizing the intended play wasn’t going to happen, he tried to run the ball up the middle of the field himself.
But, instead, he collided with the guard Brandon Moore – specifically, with hind quarters.
That collision knocked the ball out of the quarterback’s hands; it bounced almost perfectly into the hands of Patriots safety Steve Gregory, who ran 32 yards for another New England touchdown.
The Patriots would score 35 points in the second quarter alone, with the final score 49 to 19.
It only took a few minutes for fans and TV broadcasters to recognize what had happened, and for the hashtag #buttfumble to start trending on social media.
People couldn’t believe that a team had turned over the ball and given up a touchdown because one of its players ran into his teammate’s back end.
Then they remembered this was the New York Jets and then of course they could believe it.
The Jets, for their part, were mortified by what had happened, at least at first.
Though, a decade later, a punter for the Miami Dolphins inadvertently kicked a ball directly into his blocker’s behind.
As commentators and fans started talking about the “butt punt,” the guy at the center of the “butt fumble,” Mark Sanchez, posted on social media to say to that kicker, quote “Stay out of my lane bro.”
Today in 2017, a report from the Wrap about what could have been the greatest crossover event in movie history.
Tom McLoughlin, who wrote and directed one of the Friday the 13th movies in the 80s, said he once pitched executives about a horror/comedy mashup with another Paramount-owned franchise.
“What if we do ‘Cheech and Chong Meets Jason?’” he asked. “They’re like camp counselors or something. It’s like, ‘Hey, man, I saw Jason out there.’ ‘No, man, that’s a myth.’”
I don’t know about you, but I’d see that movie.
A Decade of Butt Jokes and Misery, It’s the Butt Fumble’s Birthday (The Ringer)
‘Friday the 13th’ Series Director Once Pitched ‘Cheech and Chong Meets Jason’ (The Wrap)