- Admin
- #1
It was one of the most inspirational moments of the 2011 NFL season — the Oakland Raiders prevented the Houston Texans from pulling ahead as the clock ran out in their 25-20 victory last Sunday when Raiders safety Michael Huff picked off Texans quarterback Matt Schaub in the end zone. It was a great win for the team after losing Al Davis just the day before, and we've already showed you head coach Hue Jackson's emotional speech in the locker room after the game.
It turns out that there's another point of interest about how that game ended — check out the screenshot up top and tell me how many Raiders defenders you see pre-snap?
Yep — we got the same count. The Raiders were one defender short on the play that wrapped up the game for them. As Vittorio Tafur of the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out, the players on the field were Desmond Bryant, John Henderson, Tommy Kelly, Kamerion Wimbley, Rolando McClain, Mike Mitchell, DeMarcus Van Dyke, Michael Huff, Tyvon Branch, and Stanford Routt.
Here's the video of the play:
We've confirmed with one Raiders defender that being one man short wasn't an intentional tribute -- the players weren't aware of it until after the game was over.
"We had to battle for him, because we knew he was looking down on us," Huff told the NFL Network on Monday.
Well, if you believe in such things, Davis may have been doing more than that. Was he the 11th Man in more ways than one?