Nick Boyle
As was fairly common, bruising tight end Nick Boyle was a lead blocker on the play. He remembers the actual play-call: Dice right Y casper 12 slope.
Boyle was the “casper” portion of events, which signified the motion he would go into across the formation before executing a kick-out block. Dunlap was left unblocked as the “read” defender, and he read wrong by jumping inside, so Boyle’s target was Pratt.
“Sometimes G-Ro [Greg Roman] didn’t want me to throw cut [blocks], but I’m like, ‘Screw it, I’m just going to try to cut the hell out of this guy. I’m just going to try to saw him in half.’
“So I ran over there, I didn’t get him down, but I moved him out to the left enough. I threw my cut, and I look up, and it looks like he’s going to run into me. Anytime Lamar has the ball, he could do anything, whether you missed your block or not. I kind of got out of the way, and I see him whizz by, and I’m like, ‘Oh, we’re going to get a good gain like 12, 15 yards.’ And then I just remember looking at him or the Jumbotron and seeing him do that spin move and just keep going, and we scored.”
Boyle didn’t remember having an outsized reaction. He was mostly just happy they capped another drive with a rushing touchdown – not thinking he just witnesses something magical.
“So a lot of people look at that and that was obviously one of his best runs, I think, of his career. That iconic spin move, that really set it off. But I mean, with the ball in Lamar’s hands, he could pop something like that anytime,” Boyle said.
“We get that moment every practice. Even at a walkthrough, he’ll do something crazy. To see him do that, was it like, ‘Oh crap, he’s really good like this?’ Yeah, but I think all of our players, I don’t want to say we don’t expect that, but we’re used to seeing stuff like that. It’s like, ‘Oh, Lamar’s at it again.'”