The general rule of thumb goes like this. If an offensive lineman is making eye contact with his quarterback, something’s gone wrong. A QB should see the back of his blocker’s jersey, not the front. But when Mason McCormick had no other choice, he posted up Baltimore Ravens DT Travis Jones like he was going for a rebound. As long as the quarterback stays clean and has time to make the throw, it’s a good block.
McCormick’s block against Baltimore earned plenty of buzz at the time. Speaking about it on Christian Kuntz’s podcast, he discussed why he pulled off one of the rarest moves in football.
“It’s a last resort thing,” McCormick told Kuntz on the latest episode of his show. “So I went and I overset him inside and he jabbed back outside. And so I overreacted back outside and he had my inside. And so I couldn’t get back in front of him. So I just turned around that way, and boxed him out.
“And honestly it worked. It was easier than you think.”
Of course, we gotta go to the tape. We pointed out the rep shortly after the Ravens’ game in the first example I can remember seeing in the three years under o-line coach Pat Meyer.
McCormick confirmed, as we noted, this is a technique coached by Meyer. Unorthodox as it is, it’s used when a player is unable to recover to stay square facing the defender. If the blocker, in this case McCormick, can feel where the defender is at, he’s permitted to box him out and face the “wrong” way. If he can’t feel where the defender is at, he must fully spin around and find him.
McCormick’s MacGyver moment gave Russell Wilson time to throw a patented 37-yard moonball to WR George Pickens down the left sideline. And for maybe the first time ever, McCormick got to watch a throw instead of the downfield reception.
“I could see Russ, actually,” he said. “Which made it nice. I could feel the guy behind me and I could see where Russ was trying to maneuver in the pocket.”
Certainly not a situation any lineman wants to be in again. But if the situation calls for it, a block is a block. And this was one heck of a save-face by McCormick, seemingly wise beyond his years as a rookie.
If you want a full breakdown of the play, we created a video on it below.
