Bittersweet: Zay Flowers’ Performance Leads to Heartbreaking Loss in Conference Finals

Zay Flowes embodied this Sunday the perfect personification of the term ‘bittersweet’. On the night that the rookie born in Florida certified his candidacy to be one of the stars of the league in the immediate future, his team was heavily penalized by two major errors that ended the chances of reaching the Super Bowl so longed for for the Maryland franchise.

The 23-year-old rookie, who has been growing exponentially throughout the season, became the best partner for Lamar Jackson who was having a hard time generating passing options from the pocket. Flowers, in exceptional physical condition and confidence, was the great escape route for the quarterback in the moments of greatest pressure for the Ravens who, despite always going behind, seemed capable of turning the game around.

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ROB CARRAFP

The receiver trained at Boston College had a total of 5 receptions that helped him add a total of 115 yards and a touchdown, data that would have perfectly served him to be a candidate for the MVP if not for the two flagrant errors committed and the subsequent defeat that dictated the end of the season for the Baltimore Ravens.

Youth is a burden that weighed on Flowers

These types of matches generate overexcitement in the players that is difficult to manage. The blows, the races, the noise and, above all, the great prize at stake, are factors that easily override people’s rational thinking, especially if they have never been in a similar position, as happened to Zay Flowers. in the second half of the conference finals.

The one from Florida made two major mistakes that will surely be a lesson for the rest of his career: first, Flowers was penalized for looking down on L’Jarius Sneed after a reception, in which the defender fell to the ground , while throwing the ball to his side, which is considered in the game as an act of mockery, which was finally punished with a 15-yard setback for the Ravens, after advancing 54 with his capture. This decision delayed the position of the attack so much that it missed a Touchdown opportunity, or failing that, a very safe kicking position, in a play that ultimately did not generate points for the locals.

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PATRICK SMITHAFP

While that might seem like a big mistake, it perhaps didn’t have half the impact on the result as the mistake made at the start of the fourth quarter. With a 10-point deficit and a good touchdown position, Lamar Jackson enabled Flowers’ horizontal run with a short pass. With a lot of space and the first down achieved, the rookie was not able to protect the ball and Sneed took his personal revenge by generating a fumble that led to a touchback, and therefore, a position change that could really have been worth a Super Bowl. .

According to local media reports, after the penalty for mocking Sneed, Flowers hit the substitute bench hard, causing a gap in his hand that could have affected his ability to grip the ball tightly in the subsequent fumble. In this way, two actions by a still inexperienced player truncated his chances of having left a match for history.

2024-01-29 12:35:07
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