Norfolk State coach Michael Vick says he ordered his offense into the simplest, safest play in football with a win in hand — and watched his team run something else entirely, fumble the ball away, and lose.
The Spartans held the ball with 1:34 remaining on Saturday against North Carolina Central, which had no timeouts left. Under normal circumstances, that situation ends one way: the offense kneels down and the clock runs out. Vick says that’s exactly what he called for.
Instead, quarterback Deljay Bailey took the snap from shotgun, rolled left, and fumbled. North Carolina Central recovered, drove down the field, and scored to take a 29-28 lead after a missed two-point conversion. Norfolk State got the ball back and had a chance to answer, but a 37-yard field goal attempt missed, sealing the loss.
Vick, speaking to reporters afterward, said he had already stepped away from play-calling duties by the time the ill-fated snap happened.
“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.”
He elaborated further on the breakdown in communication.
“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,” Vick 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.”
Video from the sideline showed players huddled with offensive coordinator Brian Sheppard in the game’s final moments, with Vick standing nearby without a headset, walking over to the group rather than directing the call himself. He maintains he had already given the instruction to run out the clock.
Why a run play was called in a situation that called for nothing more than a kneel-down remains unexplained. The loss is a tough one for Norfolk State, an FCS program under Vick, the former Atlanta Falcons and Virginia Tech star now building his coaching career in his home region.
