COLUMN: An ode to KhaDarel Hodge, the Falcons and distractions from life

For several minutes on end, minutes that seemed to last hours, the win was all I knew.

That’s how victories like the one the Atlanta Falcons procured last Thursday night usually are. 

The game, when it’s played so ardently and fiercely by its participants, is experienced that way by the fans. Time draws out like a blade, as Morgan Freeman said in The Shawshank Redemption. It draws out so long that the product on the field is the only thing there is in the world.

As two friends and I watched an all-time classic Falcons win unfold — the 36-30 overtime victory over Tampa Bay is probably the best win they’ve had since moving to their new, luxurious stadium, I later decided — I was enjoying the game, yes.

But for those first three quarters, I was always thinking of something else simultaneously. The game had my attention, but something else lurked at the back of my brain. Work the next day, my schedule next week, something I wanted to write. You get the idea.

And, even more so, anxiety crept in. 

As happy as I was watching at the stadium with pals, the two teams were trading blows in a way that foreshadowed something bigger, a huge ending in primetime. 

Each touchdown, field goal and turnover acted as a forecast of the storm and lightning strike that would come later, but what that storm would bring — a good Falcons fan would expect heartbreaking defeat — remained unclear as the action unfurled.

Once that final quarter rolled around and it was close, I was rapt. The game sank its hooks into me, Atlanta keeping it close enough with Baker Mayfield and company for me to become fixated.

My emotions, all-consuming as they roared from elation at a Falcons touchdown to dread as Mayfield and receiver Mike Evans connected time and again for chunk plays and touchdowns, grew and grew until there simply remained no real estate in my head for anything else.

Or so I thought. Then came overtime.

After Younghoe Koo routinely drilled the game-tying field goal to send it past regulation, the Falcons got the ball. You probably know the rest. 

KhaDarel Hodge — Prairie View A&M alum and former Cleveland Brown, it should be noted — caught a pass from Kirk Cousins and sped off into the Atlanta night all the way to the end zone, shattering records and claiming a Falcons victory for the ages.

Only then did it turn to pandemonium. The win, like I said, consumed me as I hugged my friend and almost sent us careening down the upper deck of Mercedes-Benz Stadium. All my anxieties, about the game and about life, melted away when Hodge crossed the goal line.

I screamed ‘til I was hoarse. I inadvertently made it into some poor Buccaneers fan’s presumably depressed Youtube video, I think. But it was worth it — I knew true joy. It was the win of a lifetime.

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Later, though, on a claustrophobic MARTA train, I reflected. Though still elated, I was now also a tinge ashamed. How can sports envelop me this way? With all else in life to love, how can football have an effect so profound on my mental state?

Why was I so ecstatic over something so arbitrary?

It does not happen often. It’s typically a level of attention and fascination I reserve, intentionally or not, for playoff games. That’s the only time sports dictates my life to that degree. 

Otherwise, my work, family, music and books — things I love very much — are the only things that can effectively shield me from anxiety about life.

The Falcons haven’t had any postseason appearances in several seasons, of course, but this win signified the possibility of that. It provided a glimmer of hope for Atlanta when the franchise honored its greatest all-time player, Matt Ryan, only for the newly-signed Kirk Cousins to break Ryan’s single-game passing record.

Sports are an escape. Even for one of the NFL’s most tormented fanbases — an entire issue of The Melody could not contain the embarrassments, shortcomings and deficiencies strewn across the Falcons’ rich but tortured history — fans can hope against hope, week after week, for something to inspire them.

This is not to say that, on a day-to-day basis, I don’t find small beauties in life. I love my job. A good song, a great movie, even a simple tree could all just as likely give me a shot in the arm any given day.

Sometimes there’s too much of real life in those other distractions, though. Whether it’s social commentary or just an innocuous symmetry to life, sometimes it doesn’t matter how taken I am with a film or a novel. The immersion breaks when I remember the world I live in.

Sports have plenty of that as well. Even Hodge, the very man who dashed to paydirt to send me into a frenzy at the Benz last week, could have been a reminder in the moment. His status as an undrafted journeyman turned franchise hero drew much journalistic coverage and warmed many hearts.

When Hodge scored, his personal history was lost on me. Life and its complexities were elsewhere in a way no other life distraction but sports can accomplish. 

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That’s my love of sports. Hopefully the way I am enamored with athletics comes through on these sports pages each week, because the way I felt about that Falcons win is how I’ve felt, on a few occasions, in press boxes and on football fields in Macon.

It happens every time I see a gorgeous photo from Jason Vorhees when I put together a story to post, it happens every time a coach thanks me after an interview, and it happens every time I see parents screaming their support from the bleachers.

I don’t just love the Falcons, I love sports. I ain’t ashamed to say it.

Perhaps that’s why this win was so special. All the kindling I’d built covering Macon sports this year burst into flame when the Falcons won last week. 

This win, which I got to see in person due to a blind stroke of luck, offered a potent chunk of expectation — perhaps the first substantial amount of hope the Falcons franchise has truly felt after an on-field performance since the unspeakable day that broke the spirits of all fans in 2017.

Is it embarrassing to sound so romantic, to have been so fanatical about a sports team that all else in my mind was temporarily wiped away? 

To some degree, yes. Perhaps I’m too passionate.

But I’ve waited to attend a sporting event with that kind of momentum swing, that kind of bombastic finish, for my entire life.

I think I earned it. Rise Up. Go Falcons.