Mariota could see that he was heading in Quinn’s direction as he tried to outrun the Raiders’ defense to the sideline and stop the clock. Once he felt McCollum shove him from behind, he tried to hold Quinn up as much as possible. Quinn, 55, braced for the hit, but there wasn’t much he could do with Mariota moving at that speed.
Quinn joked that the hit felt “probably like you’d expect.”
“Don’t want [that] to happen, but it was all good,” Quinn said.
Mariota said Quinn took the hit “like a champ,” but it was still a serious matter. Players, coaches and even officials rushed to Quinn’s side to check on him. He flashed a smile, patted an official on the shoulder and raised his fist to celebrate Gay’s field goal as blood trickled down his face. Quinn insisted he was fine, but trainers still looked him over just to be sure.
At that point, the players weren’t sure whether Quinn would be able to walk out with them for the third quarter. But as Wagner prepared to deliver his halftime speech, Quinn showed up and said, “I got it.”
“He came back up, and it was kind of like a movie,” Wagner said. “It was just a cool moment. I’ll remember that forever, for sure.”