Nearly two weeks after BYU’s upset of Notre Dame, Steve Young is still getting asked about the moment he hit the field.
Young appeared to be the first person to rush out after Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr’s incomplete pass, and on Wednesday’s “The Dan Patrick Show” he took some playful heat for it from Patrick.
“I legitimately kind of just lost my mind for a minute,” Young said.
The former BYU star and Super Bowl-winning quarterback said he was thinking through the situation from a player’s perspective while standing on the sideline. He believed Carr would throw quickly so Notre Dame could get two more plays off.
“But as soon as he starts to scramble, the game’s over,” he said. “This is the last play, and then the play developed right in front of me.”
Young said he never intended to be the first one onto the field.
“I reacted,” he said. “I didn’t mean to do what I did.
I just responded kind of with my body, ‘Well, that’s it.’ It’s not an excuse.
That’s just what happened.”
The ending also stirred up the 1-second controversy that followed BYU’s win. After the game, the Big 12 said that “it was determined that time remained on the clock when the ball hit the ground and the play was incorrectly cleared by the replay officiating crew.”
Patrick joked that Young was responsible for Notre Dame not getting another snap, but Young pushed back on the idea that the entire sequence was some kind of field-rushing disaster.
“So let’s be honest, let’s be really realistic about it,” Young said. “Everyone who plays football or coaches football understands what four seconds feels like, and that play felt like that.
So I understand if there’s time on the clock, there’s time on the clock. I get that.
“If Marcus Freeman had said, ‘Hey, wait a second. I think there’s time on the clock’ - or anyone would have said, ‘Hey, I think there’s time on the clock’ - they would have run it back and they would have cleared the field.”
Young kept leaning into the final-play point as Patrick kept ribbing him.
“The play took over four seconds, so you got your four seconds,” Young said. “… Humans are running the clock, and if it hadn’t clicked over, and there was one second left, they deserve another play.”
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