Ach! Tyreek Hill Machen Ze Fumble! Is Choker, Ja?

Take it from someone who knows: it feels horrible to fumble. It feels awful if you’re playing in a peewee league. It feels awful if you’re playing in high school. It feels awful if you’re playing touch football. Holding onto the ball is, to fresh eyes, the easiest job a football player can perform. You have the ball, you nestle it in the crook of your arm, and you grip it tight. Easy peasy lemon sq—OH NO!!!!!!!!

That’s Dolphins wideout and gamebreaker extraordinaire Tyreek Hill fumbling the ball inside the final minute of the first half against Kansas City. After Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie knocked the ball loose, safety Mike Edwards scooped the ball up before making a funtime lateral to fellow safety Bryan Cook, who then housed it for a third KC touchdown and a potential 14-point swing. Cook’s touchdown would prove the decisive score in the end. Hill, facing his old team for the first time and eyeing a 2,000-yard season, probably feels like shit about it.

And perhaps Germany does as well. Despite its status as a marquee matchup, the first NFL regular-season game played in Frankfurt was, for much of its duration, a desultory affair littered with more flags than a Fourth of July parade. The Chiefs committed nine fouls for sixty-nice yards while the Dolphins committed six of them for 45; seven if you count a late hit on QB Patrick Mahomes that went uncalled and will be something that Chiefs fans piss and moan about every day through their next five Super Bowl wins. This was not a pleasant morning watch. I had more fun emptying the dishwasher.

But bless their blowholes, the Dolphins still tried to make it a game. They held Kansas City scoreless the entire second half, while simultaneously getting their offense off of its collective ass to finally put two scores of their own on the board. After the Chiefs gifted Miami a final possession by eschewing a running play on third down and a short one, Dolphins RB Raheem Mostert ripped off runs of 25 and 19 yards, respectively, to get the ball to the 31. The stage was set for a thrilling endgame. Das gut, ja?

NEIN! IST NICHT!

Because Miami would follow those runs with three ghastly incompletions and then, for good measure, a fumble by QB Tua Tagovailoa on 4th down to end it all:

Since being traded from Kansas City, Tyreek Hill has made the Dolphins’ arguably the most enjoyable offense in the league while erasing any doubt as to Tagovailoa’s longterm viability at quarterback there. That both men would each commit the most humiliating mistake in football to close out both frames of this game not only cost them the top seed in the AFC presently, but also some of their self-esteem. When you fumble the ball, everyone sees it. Everyone knows it was you. You, big strong man, are the stupidest person in the world. Both Tyreek and Tua now have a bye week to live with that feeling. It’s not a good one.