The QB Who Broke the Longest Losing Streak in College Football Refused to Quit
Arizona’s Will Plummer was the last scholarship quarterback on the roster. Injuries wouldn’t stop him from leading his team to their first victory in two years.
763 days before last Saturday, movie theaters screened Joker to packed crowds, Elizabeth Warren led presidential polls, and grocery stores filled shelf after shelf with a supply of toilet paper that we would have sworn could never run out. In other words, October of 2019 was a different world. It was also the last time the Arizona Wildcats won a football game.
Until last week.
To say it has been a difficult run for football fans in Tucson would be like saying that the last two years have been drama free. The Wildcats swapped coaches. They saw half the 2020 season cancelled. They lost close game after close game.
And Arizona kept losing quarterbacks. Early season starter Jordan McCloud hurt his ankle, only to watch his replacement, Gunner Cruz, injure his thumb. That left one able-bodied scholarship quarterback on the roster: redshirt freshman Will Plummer.
Plummer came off the bench in the middle of the October 16 matchup against Colorado. Coach Jedd Fisch, in his first year at Arizona after a decades long career as an assistant across the NFL and college football, walked up to Plummer. “It’s gonna be just you,” Fisch said. “So let’s roll.”
There was another message implied there, one that didn’t need to be said aloud: if Plummer got injured, the Wildcats were out of options.
Which brings us to Saturday, a home game against the Cal Golden Bears that kicked off at high noon, the desert sun beating down at 91 degrees. It was a defensive battle, with the Wildcat defense suffocating Cal’s offense. It seemed like the Wildcats might finally break their losing streak, and then on the first play of the second quarter, Plummer got driven into the ground right onto his throwing shoulder, and had to head to the locker room. A walk-on came in to handle quarterbacking duties. Right on cue, he threw an interception.
Plummer, though, wasn’t thinking about his shoulder. He was just focused on getting back into the game. He received treatment, and soon, he was back on the field. “As weird as it sounds, I never once thought, ‘Oh, I’m done for the game,’” Plummer told ROS. If getting a chance to earn his team their first win was only a matter of stomaching pain, then Plummer knew he could toughen it out.
He only missed one series, and the game went back and forth, tied at the half, 3-3. On a third quarter scramble, Plummer got his hand jammed into a defender’s helmet. When he looked down, he saw the skin on his throwing hand, nearly the entire palm, gashed open. He ran to the sideline, received six stitches, and stormed back onto the field only a few plays later. As he approached the line of scrimmage, he realized he hadn’t practiced receiving a snap with the stitches yet. “Just get the snap,” he repeated to himself. “Just get the snap.”
He did more than that. On a drive late in the fourth quarter, he completed the 19-yard pass that led to the game-winning touchdown run. Said receiver Stanley Berryhill III after the game, “I’ve said it a million times and I’ll say it again, he’s the toughest quarterback I’ve played with.”
No kidding.
After the touchdown, Plummer took the field one more time to run a very special play that the Wildcats had been practicing for two years. They had never used it in a game. But Plummer executed it perfectly. He received the snap and took a knee. The clock ran to zeroes. At last, the Wildcats were victors. Students stormed the field.
“That moment was one of those feelings that you can’t get from anywhere else,” Plummer said. “That’s definitely one of the reasons why I love playing football.”
The Wildcats celebrated on the field, filed into the locker room, and sung the fight song. They danced some. And then Coach Fisch got up to speak. He had game balls to give out. Nobody ever questioned who would receive one of them.
It belonged to the quarterback, the teammate who refused to ever quit.
– Joe Levin
Coming Next Week: Man In The Arena
Esquire has already called it “the sports documentary event of the year,” and sure, that’s pretty niche praise but it has to count for something, right? Over the course of ten episodes, Tom Brady breaks down each of his ten Super Bowl appearances, recounting the lessons learned along the way that helped create the greatest underdog story in sports history. Episode one premiers next Tuesday, November 16 on ESPN+. We have lots of other goodies for you too—like the companion podcast that explores the ways in which Brady has shaped our understanding of sports over the last two decades and a Q&A between Brady and Gotham Chopra coming straight to your inboxes next Tuesday morning. As Brady might say...LFG!!
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Mrs. Space Cadet's Big Run
If you’re anything like me, you’ve only ever thought of a marathon as a far away goal for a class of people that very well might be from a different planet. Albert Korir winning the New York City Marathon last weekend in 2:08:22? That’s unfathomable.
But maybe that’s why I—and more than half a million others—are so infatuated with TikTok star Erin Azar, who calls herself “Mrs. Space Cadet.” About two years ago, she started filming her runs as she trained to go 26.2 miles. Azar doesn’t breeze through training like many others; the mother of three describes herself as, “a slightly overweight person who drinks too much beer.” She documented her treks up “Barf Hill” near her home and frequently laments, while panting for breath, “I’m dying.”
On Sunday, Azar finished the New York City Marathon, and the next day was invited to the Today Show. She said she could barely feel her feet—which means the rest of us will have to pick up the slack and give her a standing ovation. Thank you, Mrs. Space Cadet, for proving that any of us could run a marathon if we set our minds to it. Well, almost anybody. Just not me. I could never.
Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images
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In honor of Veteran’s Day, it’s always worth taking the time to read this moving piece about Pat Tillman, who felt a calling to help others from the time he was a boy. This piece isn’t the typical hagiography of the football player turned Army ranger; it’s an incisive look at what it truly means to sacrifice everything.
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“Somewhere inside, we hear a voice. It leads us in the direction of the person we wish to become. But it is up to us whether or not to follow.”
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