The Super Bowl. Fourth quarter. Nine minutes and change left. Taking over possession down by … eight.
Maybe not exactly the situation you dream of as a kid—I think most kids fantasize about throwing the winning score, not needing two plays to tie it—but it’s the situation Jalen Hurts found himself in last February against the Chiefs.
And, of course, it’s the situation I’d been waiting four seasons to see.
“I work for those opportunities,” Hurts told me this offseason, after he’d had some time to reflect on the game. “We work for those opportunities, so in those moments we can get things done.”
Hurts had marched the Eagles 63 yards down the field in seven plays, most of them in one big chunk. And when DeVonta Smith drifted out of bounds at the 2-yard line after catching a ball that traveled nearly 50 yards in the air, it seemed too perfect. The same quarterback who had set a single-season record for rushing touchdowns (in the regular season and playoffs combined), whose team had perfected the art of the QB sneak with a new wrinkle so devastatingly effective people were calling for it to be legislated out of the game, needed to punch it in twice for the first octopus in Super Bowl history.
Hurts and I finally have something in common: It was the moment my career had built toward, too. Sort of.
Welcome to the fourth annual Octopus of the Year Awards. Or, as I describe it each summer: The MMQB’s most self-indulgent awards gala.
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Matt Kartozian/USA TODAY Sports; Illustration by Bryce Wood
Let’s back all the way up, as we normally do, because at least some of you are a few paragraphs into this story and still not quite sure what I’m talking about. The octopus is a stat I invented in 2019 to describe when a player scores a touchdown and then also scores the ensuing two-point conversion. A player must actually be the one to score all eight points; throwing it to someone else doesn’t count.
I introduced the idea in March of that year, and things took off once the season started. By Super Bowl LIV, it was not just a burgeoning prop bet, but Caesars’s highest liability on the whole board. There were “high six-figures riding on it,” because at 12–1, whether people understood what the prop meant or not, who would bet no?
So for four years I have tracked the octopus each week. I have written about it once a summer and tweeted about it … probably a little too much. I started contacting players to give them a chance to accept the award, starting with Cam Akers in 2021 and Mark Andrews last year. And the term gained some steam, thanks largely to Scott Hanson’s adopting it on NFL RedZone. But the Super Bowl was always my white whale. The prop bet quickly spread to other sportsbooks, and I figured if this growing number of tickets someday cashed, that would be the octopus’s moment. Then Hurts came along.
I asked him to take me back to that drive, do-or-die with a dwindling few minutes left in the season. It was understandably hard for him to separate the success of that touchdown drive from the ultimate result of the game.
“In those big games, you obviously want to give it your best and do what is needed to be done in those moments to give your team the best chance to win,” he says. “And that’s something that we didn’t do enough of in that game, as we fell short. But I think the mentality is to get it done. That’s the mentality every time you step up on the field.”
Hurts answers questions carefully and thoughtfully. While defenses may struggle to stop him, he was able to stop himself well short of offering his own performance too much praise, given that it was the Chiefs who were handed the trophy in the end.
But I asked him, even putting the Super Bowl aside, what it is that makes him so effective in those short-yardage situations.
“I think over time, if people have described the quarterback position, they put it in two pots,” he says. “You have your pocket-passer quarterbacks, more traditional quarterbacks, and then you have a dual threat. But I feel like you have a very special thing when you have a triple threat, and that’s someone that can play from the pocket, using their legs and being a dynamic rusher … and then also being able to use your mind as a third threat. Those are all things that I strive to build on.”
It’s clearly working for him, as Hurts finished second in the regular-season MVP voting and led the Eagles to the Super Bowl.
“I do that all for the benefit of the team,” he adds, “and I embrace those responsibilities that I have. Those are the three things that describe my game and who I am.”
Hurts has a way of staying on message, and his message is more team-oriented. Not in a rude way, but definitely in a way that made me feel bashful about a few of my questions. “I was going to ask you which is more fun, throwing a touchdown or running one in,” I tell him. “But I have a feeling you’re gonna tell me you don’t care, as long as the team scores.”
“You’re a smart man,” he responds, giving me a line that will go straight to my LinkedIn profile.
Illustration by Bryce Wood; Tommy Gilligan/USA TODAY Sports
So Hurts takes home the octopus trophy, for his performance in crunch time on the biggest possible stage. (Note: There is not actually a trophy.) But his wasn’t the only one we saw last season. There were only seven (the fewest in a season since 2017), but they included some of the most exciting and impactful plays of the year.
Here were some other nominees:
On Halloween night, the Bengals and Browns were still scoreless late in the second quarter when Nick Chubb broke through for a touchdown. Thanks to a too-many-men-on-the-field penalty, Cleveland decided to go for two points from the 1-yard line, and Chubb gave them an always fun 8–0 lead. This was a big one for close watchers of this space for one reason: It was the first octopus in franchise history for the Browns! Every year I update the individual and team leaders (see below). When I rolled out my original piece in 2019, the Browns were the only team that hadn’t gotten one. Now they’re finally on the board.
On Sunday Night Football in Week 9, the Chiefs trailed the Titans by eight with under three minutes to go when Patrick Mahomes pulled off an outstanding scramble for a touchdown. And then, after two separate two-point conversion plays were flagged for penalties, he ran it in on the third try. The Chiefs went on to win in overtime, running their record to 6–2, en route to the AFC’s top seed. Netflix’s new show Quarterback highlighted the play but failed to mention any sea creatures, so clearly we still have some outreach to do. (It’s worth noting here that Hurts also had one in the regular season, by the way, meaning we witnessed a Super Bowl in which both teams’ starting quarterbacks had already achieved the feat that year.)
Finally, on the last day of the regular season, tucked into that final frantic afternoon window, a not-so-meaningless Texans-Colts game ended in what may go down as one of the most important plays of the decade, in certain corners of the football world. First, the Bears iced their 14th and final loss of the year. Then the Texans, with nothing to play for but pride, found themselves facing a fourth-and-20 in the final minute, down seven points. Davis Mills lofted a ball up for Jordan Akins that went 28 yards for the score. Lovie Smith, who very well may have known it was his last game, anyway, dialed up a two-point conversion attempt—and guess who Mills looked to again? An octopus from Akins bumped Houston up to a final record of 3-13-1, handing the No. 1 pick to the Bears, who eventually traded it to the Panthers. One monster octopus in a game between two also-rans swung the fortunes of at least three franchises, and I’ll never forget Akins as the answer to a Bryce Young–related trivia question.
That led us into the playoffs and some of my favorite annual traditions. Like, for example, podcasters and radio hosts talking about the octopus without knowing what it means, until they sometimes get bailed out by a producer. My favorite in that genre this year was this perfect clip from Josh Hayes and Anthony Aniano on their SiriusXM Fantasy show:
Will we see an Octopus 🐙 in Arizona during the Super Bowl? The odds are 14-1 that you will!@JoshHayesFS & @AAnianoFantasy learn what an Octopus 🐙 is & discuss the possibility of seeing one during #SuperBowlLVII!#Chiefs #Eagles #SportsBetting #FlyEaglesFly #ChiefsKingdom 🐙 pic.twitter.com/XAZODFcevr
— Fantasy Sports Radio (@SiriusXMFantasy) January 31, 2023
(Have I been quoting “There’s the math!” for the last six months? Yes. Did I appear on their show later that week? Also yes—contact my personal assistant, Conor Orr, for all booking inquiries.)
The other thing I’ve come to expect is having friends send me screenshots from group texts in which their friends announce they’ve placed a bet on the octopus, and then my friends get to tell them, “I know the guy who invented this!”
As SI Gambling’s Bill Enright tweeted when the Hurts octopus hit, “HUGE PAYOUT with Jalen Hurts getting the Octopus. Mitch Goldich single handedly responsible for this market.” Which remains a little strange when I take a step back to think about it.
The moment went mostly how I’d pictured it. The tweet rolled out from our automated bot:
Jalen Hurts OCTOPUS 🐙
— NFL Octopus Tracker 🐙🤖 (@NFL_Octopus) February 13, 2023
Chiefs 35 - Eagles 35
Q4 5:20
Jalen Hurts rushed up the middle for 2 yard touchdown (2pt attempt converted, Jalen Hurts run)
🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙🐙
And I’ll happily share credit with Hurts when it comes to being responsible for clips like this:
Or from our old pal Patrick Everson, who has shot a video of himself walking into a casino and placing the octopus bet every year.
Scenes from Sin City: The Octopus 🐙 prop has landed!! Finally, @mitchgoldich, we got there.
— Patrick Everson (@PatrickE_Vegas) February 13, 2023
13/1 at @CircaSports. Hell yeah! pic.twitter.com/iJkZQ9DYbs
Bill Simmons and Cousin Sal then discussed it on two podcasts, leading to another bevy of texts for me.
(To give you an idea as to what a big part of my life this has become, I was informed three weeks ago when a player on the Munich Ravens in the European League of Football had an octopus.)
So Super Bowl LVII was a memorable night for me. And for Hurts, even if he came away with everything but the win (304 yards passing, 70 yards rushing, four total touchdowns, multiple non-octopus Super Bowl records as well). He was still a good sport about his new claim to fame, and he was gracious in accepting his award. And if I keep giving this out every year, Hurts will have decent odds to win it again. (Though I’m not sure the sportsbooks are lining up to take any more of my bets at the moment.)
I let Hurts know that with two octopi in one season, he is very much within striking distance of Todd Gurley’s all-time career record of four. So how would that feel?
“We’ll see in time,” he says. “I’d like to break other records, but if this one is broken along the way, I’m sure I won’t look back and be sad about it.”
Yeah, that seems fair.
Now let’s update our all-time octopus leaderboards.
Individuals with multiple:
Mitch Goldich
By team:
Mitch Goldich
Every octopus ever:
Players in green have multiple octopi in their careers.
