We Can Laugh Off That Jurkovec “Fumble” Now

Oct 3, 2022 - 4:38 PM

Who among us hasn’t experienced this before? You’re going about your day, something doesn’t quite go according to plan, and bam... your brain just breaks.

Poor Phil Jurkovec had himself A Moment in the second quarter against Louisville. After #5 faked the handoff and dropped back to survey the field, the Cardinals pass rush found its way through the offensive line and into the face of the BC quarterback. Let’s all enjoy what happened next:

Oh noooo...

For one brief moment, this looked like it was going to be your standard-fare sack and the BC QB was going to live for another day, but Louisville linebacker Monty Montgomery wrapped Jurkovec up in such a way that the throwing arm was free and he was able to stay up for maybe a fraction of a second longer than anticipated.

In an unfortunate case of “sometimes hope can be a bad thing,” Jurkovec then found himself in the interesting situation of being brought down for a sack, but with his throwing hand free and a friendly face right in front of him:

Oh hey there, Pat Garwo.

It’s extra funny, too, because Garwo had the entire right side of the field available to him if the two were able to connect — but, obviously, that did not happen. Jurkovec instead rifled the ball a good three yards wide and Garwo was forced to chase. The next step in the comedy of errors was the football taking a comical yank to the right while rolling along the ground at the exact moment that Garwo looked back to see who was chasing after him, resulting in Louisville getting to the ball first and giving us this truly bizarre line in the box score:

This whole sequence of unfortunate events was so wacky that poor Phil Jurkovec went existential on us after the game:

I made a horrible play there. And, for me, coming back to the serenity prayer: ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.’ That was in a locker at Notre Dame of one of my teammates. It was shared with me after one of our hard losses. And I think that sums it up. You can’t change certain things, but there are things you can change. For the rest of the year, I hope we can just focus on things we can change and leave the rest to God.

That’s totally the right attitude here and it’s nice to see Phil come to this conclusion. This play is so wild & out that it’s just not a reflection of him as a quarterback. We all have those moments where you do something so uncharacteristically nonsensical that you wonder if you were even mentally present at the time.

Look, let’s be honest — while it wasn’t all that funny at the time, with Jurkovec and the Eagles pulling out the victory, it’s pretty funny now. Perhaps after Phil Jurkovec’s long and successful NFL career when he’s retired and up in the booth as an analyst he can break down the play and have a little bit of a chuckle at the moment.