Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey had an interception in his hands on Monday night and then just casually dropped the ball, wrongly thinking that the ball had hit the ground before he caught it. Today he acknowledged that was a huge mistake.
“I definitely did not know I had the football,” Humphrey said. “That’d have been nice, to have an interception, probably the easiest interception ever. So I guess celebrate a little slower, I guess, would be the thing for that.”
It was perhaps the strangest play of Week One in the NFL, made all the more strange by how few people realized what had happened. Both Humphrey and the intended receiver on the play, Darren Waller, seemed to think the pass had hit the ground even though it hadn’t, and the officials seemed to think so as well, and the ESPN announcers didn’t say a thing about it.
Raiders receiver Hunter Renfrow, who pounced on the ball as soon as Humphrey dropped it, was the only person on the field who seemed to realize what had happened. Humphrey didn’t realize it until he saw the replay later and learned he had missed the easiest interception ever.