Folks, Alex Smith threw a deep ball.
The Chiefs were down 17-14 to the Patriots when Smith hit Tyreek Hill with a deep ball, and it wasn’t even close. 75 yards, to the house.
He gave the Chiefs a 21-17 lead with the speedy score. He waved, and then threw up the peace sign to the Patriots secondary on his way to the end zone.
Hill is known as one of the fastest — if not the fastest player in the NFL. For reference, he can keep up pretty well with some of the fastest people on the planet.
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Hill is used to the big plays, and it’s becoming more and more routine for the second-year player:
Tyreek Hill has now scored a 65+ yard TD in 5 consecutive regular-season games pic.twitter.com/mTbAmZcdsp
— Randall Liu (@RLiuNFL) September 8, 2017
Hill’s clearly got a special kind of speed, and big-play ability. Sports Illustrated’s Peter King wrote about Hill in August, where he described a conditioning drill Andy Reid does. In the drill, Hill was doing extra running on his sprints, and Hill was still outrunning people — for conditioning:
Reid has a conditioning drill he likes to do in training camp. It’s called the 110. Three groups (skill players in one, linemen in another, tight ends and linebackers in the other) line up, one after another, along one sideline, and take off, running 53 yards to the opposite sideline, then running back. One day, he noticed the indefatigable Hill running little serpentine 8’s from side to side. This guy was voluntarily running an extra 15 or 20 yards on every 110 with this weaving—and still finishing at or near the lead of his group.
Smith is known for not throwing many deep passes, so when he hits Hill on a deep pass like this, it’s a big deal. Even if we know what Hill can do with his feet.
Way to go, Alex Smith.