Imagine that you are an offensive lineman, 360-pounds, crouched down into a three-point stance, ready to explode on the snap count. Your knees are sore from years in the trenches and your elbow is aching from the hit you took from the defensive lineman ten minutes ago. Even if you were fully healthy, it ain’t easy crouching into a three-point stance when you are nearly 400-pounds. You’ve been in your crouch for eight seconds, ten seconds, fifteen seconds, and then you see the play clock run out.
You stand up and look behind you, only to see the quarterback, the face of the franchise, the team’s highest-paid player, the 220-pound pretty boy who only has to stand upright and bark out orders prior to the play. He’s thirty yards upfield, heading towards the sideline, having called a timeout about twelve seconds ago but never bothering to tell you.
I see this every week in the NFL, including last week’s preseason games. The quarterback calls a timeout and walks away from the five or six guys who are charged with saving him from a weekly dose of bone-rattling concussions, leaving them crouched on the ground, bent over, facing down a drooling, mouth-breathing defensive lineman.
If I were the center or one of those beefy guards, I’d walk over to the sidelines and kick the quarterback’s ass. Have the decency to let your team know that a timeout has been called, damn it.
