Broncos outside linebacker Von Miller is now saying he didn’t illegally bat the ball after Cam Newton fumbled with four minutes left in the Super Bowl.
Although Miller told Peter King of TheMMQB.com that when he hit the loose ball after Newton’s fumble he was “trying to, I don’t know, get it to one of our guys,” Miller revised that comment today on ESPN. Miller said today that he was trying to pick the ball up when he knocked it back toward the Panthers’ goal line, where Broncos safety T.J. Ward jumped on it.
“I don’t know what the Peter King article came out as, but honestly, I was trying to scoop it up and go score. If you watch the film again, I am trying to scoop it and score. If I batted it, it’s totally different. I was trying to scoop and score,” Miller said.
If Miller had batted it back intentionally and the officials had seen it, it would have been a penalty and the Panthers would have kept the ball. But Miller says that’s not what he was doing.