The Washington Football Team took the ball with 10 minutes and 55 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter on Sunday, holding a four-point lead over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
By the time Tampa got the ball again, only 29 seconds remained and Washington had a commanding two-score, 29-19 lead. Game over.
There were plenty of historical touchstones for Washington on that drive and in the game. Chief among them, it was only the second time ever Washington has beaten Tom Brady, the first since Sept. 28, 2003. Washington's 19-play, 80-yard final drive lasted 10 minutes and 26 seconds, the longest fourth-quarter drive (in terms of time of possession resulting in a TD) in the NFL since 2001. The last time Washington had a 19-play drive was Oct. 27, 1991, the season Washington last won the Super Bowl.
Washington receiver Terry McLaurin reflected on that historic drive during his weekly 106.7 The Fan appearance with Grant Paulsen and Danny Rouhier on Monday.
"It was crazy, because I remember they had just scored and I'm looking at the scoreboard, it's 19-23 I believe or something like that," McLaurin said. "And I'm walking onto the field, I'm like, 'Okay, we just need a good scoring drive, just take it a play at a time.'"
"That was really the mindset," he said. "Because you saw 10:56 — you see 10:56 in the quarter, let alone the fourth quarter, that's a lot of time. You'd think you'd at least get a few possessions. I think to end the game with the ball in our hands, controlling what we can control and putting the ball in the end zone, we didn't leave anything to chance.
"We were aggressive in the play-calling, we were aggressive in the execution. And that's what you have to do to win games against teams like that, and especially with a quarterback like they have on the opposite side. And so for us to be able to melt down the clock literally 10 minutes on a drive like that, I felt like we deserved to win the game. It was a great team effort — offense, defense and special teams — and it felt good to get back on the winning side."
Washington snapped a four-game losing streak to improve to 3-6 on the season with the win. Along the way on that unfathomable drive, Washington converted on a crucial third-and-5 — one of four successful third-down conversions on the drive — on a six-yard pass from Taylor Heinicke to McLaurin, who held onto the ball despite being crunched by two defenders the instant it touched his fingers. Tampa had no timeouts left before the play, allowing Washington to continue to drain the clock at will after the conversion.
"I took a pretty good hit," McLaurin said. "But when you're trusted in that situation, I knew the play call, I knew the ball was gonna come my way. Just to be trusted in that situation and try to give us a chance to win the game, I mean, that's what I work for and that's why I put in all this time and effort, sacrifice myself to try to put us in positions to win games. I felt like we really executed that play."
McLaurin, not typically one for grandiose celebrations, got up and thumped his chest with two closed fists.
"I felt like everybody felt like I was down," he said. "You're gonna take some hits, but I wanted to show everybody that I was good, feeling good and that was a big play for us."
Prior to the drive, nobody made any special statements to amp the team up. Washington was simply locked in on taking it play by play with especially successful results.
"No, I mean I think we were really just in the moment of taking it play by play," McLaurin said. "And honestly, nobody can predict that you're gonna go on a 10-minute drive. You know what I mean? Maybe four or five minutes, even six on a long occasion. But to think that we were gonna go out there and drain the whole clock and score a touchdown, we didn't predict that. We just wanted to put one play after another together, convert on third downs and score. And it just so happens we were able to do that, but also take away the clock and kind of keep things in our possession."
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