Buccaneers tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins made a couple of rookie mistakes yesterday, and coach Lovie Smith was quick to call him on both.
Seferian-Jenkins punctuated his touchdown by placing the ball on the ground and putting on leg on it, Captain Morgan-style. That was a 15-yard penalty for using the ball as a prop.
Then he made it worse by posting a photo of it on Instagram with the caption “Everybody has a little captain in them. #Itsabucslife.”
“When guys make mistakes, I confront them immediately, which happened this time,’' Smith said, via Rick Stroud of the Tampa Bay Times. “How’s that?
“The penalty of course, right away. And when I found out about the Instagram, . . . I’m on Facebook a little bit so I can get pictures of my grandchild. Besides that, I’m not really into the rest of the stuff. Once it came to my attention, then I confronted him.’'
Naturally, the photo is gone now. And so is a chunk of the poor kid’s rear end, based on Smith’s tone, the fact the Falcons were able to start a game-winning drive at their own 35, and the Bucs’ subsequent 1-8 record.
“It is a teaching moment, though, for a rookie,’' Smith said of the penalty . “You hate...you know with rookies you want to have those teaching moments before something happens out there. We go over the rules, of course, you can’t use a prop after a touchdown. But when you do it in that situation, it’s just not good. I’d also tell you he’d like to have a lot – not a lot – but a couple plays [back]. He jumped off-side one time. He’d like to have a couple things back but the guy really plays hard and we’ll clean those things up.’'
Seferian-Jenkins is probably lucky. If the ship in the Bucs end zone were real, he’d have been a candidate for a good keel-hauling.