What is a Roberto Aguayo field goal attempt like? It’s like two deer in the woods where one deer hears the other creeping carefully by in the distance, and holds perfectly still until it passes. It’s like when your car starts making that click-click-pffffffft sound, but then a couple of days later it’s basically quiet, or at least it seems like it, and you’re pretty sure everything is fine. It’s like the corner store being out of cheddar-and-sour-cream potato chips so you just buy barbecue instead, which are actually pretty good, too. It’s like jumping into a hot tub on a cold day and having your feet burn but you stay in anyway, because it’s only a hot tub and it will get better and you’ll like it.
Monday night’s football game — I use “game” in the clinical sense here, in that there were teams and players and points being scored — between the Panthers and the Buccaneers was decided by a game-winning Aguayo field goal. Aguayo, as you might know, is the greatest kicker of all time, a reverse Achilles whose slender ankle was the only part of his body dipped into the River Styx, the blessed and long-prophesied Second Rounder.
He is the iron-toed savior of Tampa Bay. Also, he did this:
Then he did this:
But then, as these things sometimes go, our hero was given another chance.
The Bucs beat the Panthers, 17–14. Tampa Bay improved to 2–3; Carolina fell to 1–4. It was a night full of false-start penalties and Derek Anderson interceptions and Jacquizz Rodgers scampers and Jameis Winston overthrows and decisions to (shhhh) change the channel and watch playoff baseball instead. It was also a night in which Aguayo, whom the Bucs traded up to select in the second round of the 2016 draft, connected for his fourth field goal in eight career attempts. Just look how happy it made him.
What is a Roberto Aguayo field goal attempt like? It is like a shower after the beach.
