Some interesting theories coming out of the San Francisco 49ers vs. Minnesota Vikings game last night. During the second quarter of the game, Vikings TE T.J. Hockenson goes down after a tough hit and came up limping, but commentary from Joe Buck makes it seem like the Vikings were up to some shenanigans.
At the point of potential injury during the play, Hockenson dropped to the field, holding his left calf out of pain. Buck insinuates that the Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell told his player to fake an injury during the live Monday Night Football broadcast:
“I’ll say this. We just caught Kevin O’Connell on camera saying, ‘T.J. go down.'”
While there is video footage of the coach telling the player to get down, it was because Hockenson was limping after a hard hit, and he did not want his player to try and slowly get off the field. It’s better just to go down and get the injury timeout… you stop the clock, can swap guys out, have more time to call the next play… teams do it all the time. Not to mention, you don’t want your starting TE, who is clearly limping, to injure himself further trying to get off the field.
Joe Buck should know this… it literally happens in every game. An injured player tries to hop off the field, is struggling, and the coach or a teammate just tells them to sit down and stop the clock. And even if he was faking an injury, quiet down Joe… you narc.
After the commercial break, Joe Buck quickly covers up his poor announcement assumption backtracking to note that he appeared to be fine and that he went down because he was “gimpy.”
“Hockenson appears to be fine on the sideline. He was gimpy getting up after blocking out in front of Cam Akers. And Kevin O’Connell saw that and just told Hockenson to go down, which is what he did. That stopped the clock.”
While announcer mistakes are made sometimes, Buck made another slip-up in the third quarter when Hockenson went down again, saying that this felt “more legit.”
Troy Aikman asked Buck if he was told to go down again, to which Buck responded:
“He was not… this feels a little more legit.”
Why are announcers speculating on the seriousness of injuries during the game? Do we really need Joe Buck’s hunch on whether an injury is real or fake after every play? It all just seems unwarranted, especially coming from a broadcast veteran like Joe Buck. Then again, this is also why I tune into the ManningCast instead…
Don’t sleep on this Vikings team, people… in a very weak NFC, they’re poised to do some damage.
