DENVER (AP) — Even the beneficiaries of Jonathan Taylor's goal line gaffe couldn't understand why anyone coasting in for a touchdown would let go of the football before crossing the goal line.
“I don't get it, but I'm not going to try to,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said after Taylor's 41-yard touchdown-turned-touchback allowed Denver to turn the blooper into a blowout.
“I don’t know, man. It was a big run in the game for a sure touchdown,” Broncos safety P.J. Locke said. “Because, I mean, he has some jets. On God, he has some freakin’ jets. And I just think he was already ready for his celebration.
"I don’t know, I couldn’t tell you. It’s an unfortuante play.”
For Taylor and the Colts (6-8), maybe, but a godsend for the Broncos (9-5), whose 31-13 victory snapped the franchise’s seven-year run of losing records and put them on the cusp of their first playoff berth since the 2015 season.
Taylor sliced through Denver's defense for a 41-yard touchdown run in the third quarter but as the teams lined up for the extra point that would have given Indianapolis a 20-7 lead, the crowd went crazy watching the replay on the stadium's giant scoreboard.
Referee Carl Cheffers announced the TD was under review.
"And I’m thinking, why are they reviewing it?” recounted Taylor, who, up to that point, had no idea he'd goofed up.
“No, you’re never consciously aware you’re dropping the ball,” Taylor said. "Otherwise, you wouldn’t do it.”
The Broncos responded to the gift by closing the game on a 24-0 blitz after scoring just seven points in their first nine drives.
“I don’t know how it would have played out after that, but I do know we would have had six more points if I had crossed the goal line with that ball,” Taylor said.
Taylor was roasted on social media for his blunder, and it certainly didn’t help him that this was the first weekend of fantasy football playoffs.
In standard scoring leagues, Taylor, a star who gets the starting nod better than 99% of the time in fantasy football, would have produced a 10.1-point play had he held onto the ball a millisecond longer to complete his 41-yard touchdown run.
Instead, the 40-yard run and fumble produced just 2 points in fantasy football because he lost the six points for a TD, two more for a fumble and the .1 because that last yard didn’t count. That’s plenty enough wasted points for countless fantasy football players to have been eliminated from their playoff brackets.
Thus, the extra online outrage.
“That has never happened to me before,” Taylor said, “and it will never happen again.”
Taylor wasn't alone in his misery Sunday. In Nashville, Cincinnati safety Jordan Battle thought he had a 61-yard fumble return for a touchdown until he dropped the ball just shy of crossing the goal line, just like Taylor did.
In October, Jets rookie receiver Malachi Corely did the same thing, erasing his first NFL touchdown. He has yet to reach the end zone.
Like Battle's blunder, Corely's brain lock didn't end up mattering much because it didn't cost his team a victory. Taylor's blunder turned the game around in Denver, whose win all but snuffed out Indy's slim playoff hopes.
Taylor, Corely and Battle join an ignominious club of pros whose goal line goofs live in infamy.
In 2008, Eagles rookie receiver DeSean Jackson celebrated a touchdown against the Cowboys by flipping the ball behind him — at the 1-yard line. The most famous goal line gaffe came during Dallas' 53-17 blowout of Buffalo in the Super Bowl following the 1992 season when Don Beebe chased down 290-pound defensive lineman Leon Lett and knocked the ball out of his right hand as he held it out in premature celebration of a touchdown.
Taylor's goof-up seems different because he's not a defender or a rookie and his mistake was indeed consequential. Plus, Taylor is used to scoring touchdowns. He has scored 52 of them in his five-year NFL career after scoring 55 times in his three seasons at the University of Wisconsin.
As a running back, Taylor knows he should have known better.
“You go over those scenarios, but it just can’t happen,” Taylor said. “No matter the game, no matter the scenario, you could be up 50, down by 50, in a playoff game, the first game of the season. That should never happen.”
“You would think these offensive guys would hold onto the football getting through the touchdown nowaways,” Denver pass rusher Jonathon Cooper said. “But as you can see, it still happens. I just hope it never happens to us.”
Actually, it did happen to the Broncos back in the 2013 NFL opener when linebacker Danny Trevathan was about to score a pick-6 in his first NFL start when he dropped the ball as he approached the end zone and it was knocked out of bounds for a touchback.
Although it didn't matter in Denver's 49-27 rout of the Ravens that night, Trevathan got an immediate tongue-lashing from defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio, who admonished him to bring the football back with him if he ever happened to get into the end zone.
Trevathan did just that when he scored his first and only NFL touchdown on a 25-yard pick-6 of Philip Rivers' pass two years later.
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Denver Broncos' Bo Nix throws during the first half of an NFL football game against the Indianapolis Colts Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/Jack Dempsey)
Indianapolis Colts head coach Shane Steichen, foreground, heads off the field after an NFL football game against the Denver Broncos, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The New Orleans Police Department, plagued for decades by corruption, is pushing to finally end more than a decade of federal oversight, amid lingering memories of a 1994 murder ordered by a crooked cop and an attempted cover-up in the 2005 killing of unarmed civilians.
Department critics are expected to voice opposition to lifting court-ordered federal oversight at a hearing Tuesday in federal court, likely raising concerns before a federal judge over racial disparities in police use of force, poor handling of sex crimes and lackluster community engagement.
To what extent federal oversight meaningfully changed the NOPD is particularly relevant as a cadre of high-ranking former NOPD officers and one of the lawyers overseeing the city consent decree are now responsible for managing a state-level reform plan for the Minneapolis police department in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
In 2011, the Department of Justice investigation found evidence of racial bias, misconduct and a culture of impunity in the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD). Two years later, the City of New Orleans entered into what it described as “the nation’s most expansive" federal oversight plan — a reform pact known as a consent decree — to fix the city's police force.
NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said in an interview that the department has fulfilled these goals: “We’ve built that system." If the federal judge agrees with the city and the Department of Justice motion to end the consent decree filed in September, the NOPD will remain under federal oversight for an additional two-year sustainment period.
Almost everyone is willing to acknowledge the NOPD of today is in many ways a transformed department. But a range of prominent community activists and watchdogs say the NOPD is still not yet ready to relinquish federal oversight.
Stella Cziment, who heads the Office of the Independent Police Monitor, a civilian-run city agency, said that while the NOPD has made significant strides improving its internal policies and leadership, it has focused more on meeting federal benchmarks and not enough as a whole to work with community members to reshape the department.
“I think the danger of the consent decree is that we lose sight of who the true audience is supposed to be of these police reforms,” Cziment said. “And ultimately, it is the community that is going to be served by the NOPD, needs to feel included by the NOPD, heard by the NOPD. And I cannot say today that that has been achieved.”
In recent years, the NOPD and the City of New Orleans has weathered payroll fraud allegations, a high-profile corruption charge involving the mayor’s bodyguard and a backlog of unsolved rape cases, among other problems raised by watchdogs.
Despite these ongoing issues, Rafael Goyeneche, president of a local anti-corruption nonprofit, the Metropolitan Crime Commission, said federal oversight of the NOPD and its upwards of 900 members should be seen as a “success story" — especially in light of the department's history.
“Unfortunately, there will probably never be a day in any department of this size where some officers are violating the rules, some officers haven’t crossed the line,” Goyeneche said. “But that is not going to necessarily mean that the entire department is corrupt or mismanaged.”
Federal monitors have said the consent decree should be seen as the floor, not the ceiling for policing in New Orleans.
Jonathan Aronie, the lead federal monitor, has praised the NOPD for improving its policies, training and auditing. The department now produces accurate data allowing auditors — and the public — to better track policing practices and bolster accountability, he has said.
“When we look at the collection of all these data, we no longer see a pattern of practice of unconstitutional conduct,” Aronie said at an Oct. 28 public meeting.
For many residents in a city that is just over 50% Black, distrust of the NOPD runs deep and the department's data still reveals troubling disparities. Nearly 90% of all instances of police use of force targeted Black people last year, the city's Office of the Independent Police Monitor reported.
More than a decade ago, the Department of Justice's investigation highlighted similar rates of racial disparities in use of force against Black people as well as disproportionate arrest rates, calling for “a searching review and a meaningful response" from the NOPD.
“If we haven’t achieved the goal, why would we eliminate a structure that protects New Orleanians civil rights?” Rachel Taber, an organizer with local immigrant rights group Unión Migrante, said.
Confronted by community activists at a recent public meeting with data indicating these racial disparities, Aronie said federal oversight focused on improving the police department's policies and structures given "the difficulties of solving bias in the same way it exists across almost every institution in the U.S.”
“I would like to live in a city where those differences in practice reflect in the statistics before NOPD exits oversight,” Zunyana Crier, an activist with the group New Orleans for Community Oversight of Police, responded.
The NOPD's superintendent said in an interview that the department takes the data on racial disparities “extremely seriously” and continues to probe the reasons for them.
“When we see disparities, we then ask the question, is there a bias behind the disparity? Not all disparities equal bias,” Kirkpatrick said.
Federal oversight mandated biennial surveys of New Orleanians experiences with and perceptions of the NOPD, but an updated survey has not been released since 2019 due to COVID-19 related public health concerns according to federal monitors, leaving it difficult to fully gauge how residents view their police department.
The City of New Orleans has also lapsed in fully carrying out plans for community advisory boards, intended to give residents across different neighborhoods an opportunity to provide feedback directly to the NOPD. That program had largely been left to “wither and die” acknowledged NOPD Deputy Superintendent Nicholas Gernon at a recent public meeting, though he said the city intended to fix it.
W.C. Johnson, a longtime community activist opposed to ending the consent decree, said he and others had grown cynical over the years with the NOPD's willingness to work with residents: “When you’re not being taken seriously, when you’re not being included, why waste time?”
Police accountability groups have also expressed concerns over the lack of Spanish and Vietnamese language accessibility in the monthslong period of public comment — given the two group's large presence in the city — after the city filed the motion to wind down federal oversight.
And they have said at public meetings that they perceive some on the federal monitoring team and the NOPD to have significant incentives to cast their decade-long work in New Orleans in a positive light.
During a sparsely attended public meeting on Oct. 29, one member of the federal monitoring team, Ashley Burns, openly criticized her colleague, deputy monitor David Douglass along the same lines. Douglass, a lawyer whose nonprofit Effective Law Enforcement for All won a contract this year to oversee the Minneapolis police department's state-imposed reform plan, has hired a range of former NOPD personnel in his organization.
“I agree with the community, I think it’s a great, great, great conflict of interest among a lot of other ethical and integrity issues," Burns told Douglass in the meeting. “You don’t give a damn about Minneapolis or the people of New Orleans.”
Douglass has denied any conflict of interest and in a brief interview championed the NOPD's evolution: “Many of the practices here are serving as a model for the nation and for other departments."
Associated Press reporter Kevin McGill in New Orleans contributed to this report.
Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96
This undated photo shows Kim Groves. (The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)
An undated photo shows Len Davis. (The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)
A coalition of social action groups arrive to attend a public hearing on the NOPD consent decree at Loyola Law School in New Orleans, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Jasmine Groves wears a pin commemorating her mother at a memorial in New Orleans Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, three decades after Kim Groves was killed in a murder arranged by New Orleans police officer Len Davis. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)
Jasmine Groves with her daughter and grandson attend her mother Kim's memorial in New Orleans, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, three decades after she was killed in a murder arranged by New Orleans police officer Len Davis. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)
Police and activists attend a public hearing on the NOPD consent decree at Loyola Law School in New Orleans, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
A coalition of social action groups protest outside Loyola Law School before a public hearing on the NOPD consent decree in New Orleans, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
A coalition of social action groups protest outside Loyola Law School before a public hearing on the NOPD consent decree in New Orleans, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
A coalition of social action groups protest outside Loyola Law School before a public hearing on the NOPD consent decree in New Orleans, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
A coalition of social action groups protest outside Loyola Law School before a public hearing on the NOPD consent decree in New Orleans, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
People attend a public hearing on the NOPD consent decree at Loyola Law School in New Orleans, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Jasmine Groves, the daughter of Kim Marie Groves who was fatally shot Oct. 13, 1994, in an execution ordered by former New Orleans police officer Len Davis, holds a portrait of her mother in New Orleans, La., Oct. 8, 2014. (Matthew Hinton/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)
Lance Madison is detained by police, Sept. 4, 2005, including NOPD officer Michael Hunter, in light blue shirt at right, and NOPD Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, left, in blue and rolled up sleeves. Partially obscured behind Bowen is NOPD Sgt. Arthur Kaufman in white shirt. (Alex Brandon/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)
Morrell Johnson of New Orleans, is detained by NOPD Sgt. Arthur Kaufman on the Gentilly side of the Danziger Bridge, September 4, 2005. (Alex Brandon/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)
