Patrick Mahomes threw a walk-off pass to win the Super Bowl. Freddie Freeman hit a walk-off grand slam to win a World Series game. Stephen Curry said “nuit, nuit” to win an Olympic basketball title in Paris, Noah Lyles won 100-meter gold by about the smallest margin possible, and Sabrina Ionescu won a WNBA Finals game with a 30-foot heave.
Depending on who you rooted for, some made you cheer, some left you crushed. Some were the sort that have never been seen before, in a good way: Shohei Ohtani, on the night he started baseball’s 50-50 club, drove in 10 runs in a performance for the ages. Some were the sort that have never been seen before, in a jarring way: Scottie Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 golfer, got arrested before the second round of the PGA Championship and taken away in handcuffs to jail — where he had a sandwich and started warming up for the tee time he ended up making.
And maybe the best way to describe what we had, when all these things happened, are the words Washington Commanders right guard Sam Cosmi used after his team beat the Chicago Bears with a Hail Mary pass:
“Front-row seats,” Cosmi said, “to something amazing.”
“Nuit nuit”
Stephen Curry, the Golden State Warriors’ superstar sharpshooter, made his Olympic debut one to remember and saved his best for last. He hit four 3-pointers in the final minutes, each shot more dramatic than the last, to seal the U.S. win over host France for gold.
Curry’s signature celebration is the “night night,” where he puts his hands together at the side of his face, as if it’s time to go to sleep. In Paris, he brought shirts that made it perfectly clear to the French what that meant — yes, the message written on the shirts was “nuit nuit.”
A Super walk-off …
Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes did something no one has ever done: He threw a Super Bowl-winning touchdown pass on the final play of the title game.
San Francisco kicked a field goal to open overtime of Super Bowl 58, and Mahomes had 75 yards to go to try and answer. He scrambled for eight yards on fourth-and-1 to keep the drive alive — a huge play that probably very few remember. He went 8 for 8 on passes in overtime, engineering a perfect drive.
The finale: a 3-yard toss to Mecole Hardman with 3 seconds left in overtime, and the Chiefs were back-to-back champions.
… and an Olympic walk-off
OK, technically, the U.S. women’s rugby sevens team won the Olympic bronze medal with a kick (a conversion, they call it).
But the real moment was Alex Sedrick, running the length of the field and into history.
Sedrick got the ball with about 8 seconds left, ran through three Australia defenders and took it all the way down the field for a try that tied the game at 12-12 with no time left. Her kick won bronze for the Americans, a result that made star Ilona Maher — the undisputed face of the sport in the U.S. — an even bigger name and breathed new life into the sport in a country where it still has tons of room to grow.
The women’s Final Four
In this case, let’s make three games — Iowa vs. UConn, South Carolina vs. N.C. State, then South Carolina vs. Iowa for the title — one moment.
Maybe a movement is the better word.
Caitlin Clark’s record-setting year, South Carolina’s undefeated run to the national title, UConn’s return to the Final Four, they were all part of a scintillating year for women’s basketball. The WNBA saw enormous growth — Clark, its rookie of the year, helped fuel that in a big way — and more eyeballs were on the game than ever before.
On the track
Everything at an Olympics is a moment for someone; a lifetime of work typically coming down to a few seconds.
