“Sam Darnold just continues to play at a massively high level that is really fun to watch,” O’Connell said.<\/p>\n
Darnold credited Falcons Head Coach Raheem Morris for designing the blitz by safety Justin Simmons.<\/p>\n
“They brought a really good pressure that got home, and I was able to kind of make Justin miss a little bit,” Darnold explained.<\/p>\n
He moved to his right and could have tucked and run, but Jefferson was almost as open as a punt returner inside the 10-yard line. Darnold showed his arm strength, flicking the ball on the move from midfield, and Jefferson backpedaled into the end zone.<\/p>\n
Darnold acknowledged Jefferson’s arm go up to indicate availability, which can sometimes be a pitfall if the receiver doesn’t know another defender is sneaking up, but this time, there was nothing but space.<\/p>\n
“I heard on the sideline that if I would have had time [to stay in the pocket and not scramble], he absolutely cooked the dude on the route that was called for him,” Darnold said. “And for him to be able to score on a play that he would have scored on if I had time anyways, that was awesome to see.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Sam Darnold just continues to play at a massively high level that is really fun to watch,” O’Connell…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214405,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[223,254,39903,2554,224,7,8265,2780,9328,1025,1219,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-214404","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-falcons","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-falcons","10":"tag-atlanta-falcons-at-minnesota-vikings-2024-reg-14","11":"tag-atlantafalcons","12":"tag-falcons","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-jordan-addison","15":"tag-justin-jefferson","16":"tag-justin-jefferson-all-content","17":"tag-news-index","18":"tag-news-team","19":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114869062679443524","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214404\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}