On Thursday Nov. 22 — Thanksgiving 2012 — Mark Sanchez ran into a butt and fumbled the football. If it wasn’t the worst play in NFL history, it was certainly the most embarrassing. Watch the GIF again.
Mark Sanchez charges directly into his own teammate, drops the football, and then sees a Patriots player scoop it up and run the other way.
As the play unfolds, he lies on the ground and it’s honestly heartbreaking.
The best thing ever written about the Buttfumble was written years ago by @Rodger_Sherman for this very website, and so I’ll quote it again:
“There are a lot of things that are great about buttfumble. It's funny that of all people this happened to Mark Sanchez, whose badness with the Jets was legendary. It's funny that this came in a horrific span of play by the Jets where they allowed three touchdowns in under a minute, encapsulating the horror show that franchise has been since making back-to-back AFC Championship game appearances. It's funny that the phrase "buttfumble" has become common parlance, leading to a Wikipedia page and Al Michaels saying "buttfumble" on Sunday Night Football, forcing one of sports television's most staid personalities to acknowledge that we all have a smelly hole on our body that we pass smelly poop through.
The Buttfumble is a reminder of something I love about sports. For the foreseeable future, people playing sports will try to do things on TV. Sometimes they will accomplish them, and it will be beautiful. Sometimes they will fail, and we will get to sit and laugh at the failures of people we've never met before, and wonder how in the world they thought they were good enough to not fail so horribly. And that is something we should be thankful for.”
Beautiful words. Important words. Words about a butt, and so much more.
So happy birthday, Buttfumble! We will be thankful for you, ever Thanksgiving.