Sometimes, there are stories in sports that you’d only expect to see in the movies. We saw one of those on Monday night in Tampa Bay when the Los Angeles Rams beat the Buccaneers with a late field goal by Matt Gay.
Yes, the same Matt Gay who the Buccaneers drafted in the fifth round and cut less than a year later.
Gay’s 40-yarder proved to be the game-winner, sinking his former team in the stadium he called home last year. And his game-winning field goal came just two days after Gay officially joined the Rams for his first practice with the team.
He went from being a free agent to beating the team that cut him in a matter of a week and even he couldn’t have predicted this.
“You can’t write it,” he said after the Rams’ 27-24 win. “It’s one of those stories that you’re sitting on a practice squad and the first game you’re activated, you’re going to the place you were last year – the place that you felt you should’ve been and get to play on prime-time Monday Night Football. There was a lot of emotion for me coming back in, was able to see some people obviously that I still love down here and being back in Raymond James. So it was a little bit more for me to come back and play in this stadium and hit that kick.”
Gay called it “kind of a crazy story coming back to Tampa,” saying there were a lot of emotions running through him. He missed a 44-yarder earlier in the game, but he moved forward and drilled a more important kick with 2:36 left in the game.
Missing a field goal in your first game with a new team is never easy, let alone when your former coaches and teammates are also on the other sideline. But Gay didn’t hang his head over the miss and bounced back in the biggest way possible.
“I thought I hit that one good, just drifted right on me,” Gay said of his 44-yard miss. “But as a kicker, you’ve got to have a short memory. The next play is all that matters, let it go, learn from it and move on. Just kind of went to the sideline, focused on what I did, got some ball-contact work in the net and making sure that I was ready for that next play. Great snap, great hold and was able to put it through on that last one.”
Whether Gay remains the team’s primary kicker remains to be seen. The Rams also have Austin MacGinnis on the practice squad, and he could conceivably continue competing for the job. Sean McVay would probably like to see more consistency out of the position still, but at least Gay came through in the clutch when the Rams needed him most.
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