November is the time of year when the college football season zeroes in on how the major teams from the top conferences perform with weeks to go before the final playoff rankings are announced.
On this Sunday, it’s worth checking in on what happened to Michael Vick’s Norfolk State Spartans over the weekend. The North Carolina Central Eagles pulled off a miraculous victory over Norfolk State in a Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) matchup.
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The Eagles won in the final seconds of the game but Vick told reporters it likely could have all been avoided if someone was listening to him. The former Atlanta Falcons quarterback was getting ready to celebrate when everything went south.
North Carolina Central had no timeouts and Norfolk State had the ball with 1:34 to play on Saturday. All the Spartans had to do was run the clock out. Vick said he called for the victory formation, which would have been at least two kneel downs or a running play to take as much time off the clock as possible.
Instead, Norfolk State quarterback Deljay Bailey took a snap from the shotgun formation, ran to his left and fumbled the ball. North Carolina Central recovered the fumble and the offense marched down the field and scored to take a 29-28 lead after missing the two-point conversion.
Vick said he told his offense to do the very opposite.
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“I don’t know what happened at the end of the game,” Vick said, via WTKR-TV. “I put my headset down. I called victory formation. All we had to do was take a knee, kneel the clock out. That’s just situational football. I don’t know what happened in regards to that. I looked up and we was running the ball, and then I seen the fumble. But my final instructions was victory formation. That’s when you kneel it out. And they had, I think, zero timeouts left and the game was over practically.”
“Well, I put my headset down, and I took my headset off because all we had to do was just run it three times, or two times, or kneel it out,” he continued. “That’s called victory. I don’t know what happened. A run play was called. I looked up, I seen us running the ball. I don’t know what happened. I really don’t. I don’t know what the play call was. I don’t know why we even ran that play.”
A video of the final moments of the game showed the players meeting with offensive coordinator Brian Sheppard. Vick was around the huddle without a headset and casually walked to the meeting. The former NFL star said he definitely called for a “victory formation.”
It’s unclear why there was a risky play called at that particular moment.
Norfolk State did get the ball back and got into field-goal range. But a 37-yard field goal was missed.