In many ways it’s the ultimate football play, an exhilarating combination of individual payoff, team reward and good, old-fashioned fun.
It brings fans out of their seats, sends a buzz through teammates and makes every highlight package.
Tackles and blocks may still be the nuts and bolts of the game, but touchdown passes are the spark that ignites the fuel and spins the crank.
Nobody is spinning it more often than Blue Bombers quarterback Zach Collaros, at a career-high 32 turns and counting this season.
Want the needle threaded over the middle?
Prefer the high, arcing deep ball?
How about a scramble play that goes so far off the pages of the play book neither the quarterback nor the receiver thought it would hit pay dirt?
Collaros is doing them all, and the guys at the business end of his work are having a blast.
“An incredible player,” first-year receiver Dalton Schoen said, Tuesday. “He has in his repertoire the ability to make any throw there is on the field.”
Schoen leads the CFL with 11 touchdown grabs.
In third place is teammate Nic Demski, with a career-high nine, including two last week against Saskatchewan.
“When we get the look that we want, I get excited out there,” Demski said. “And all I want to do is catch that ball and bring in six for my teammates… the deeper the pass the more exciting it is for the fans and for the team. When I come to the sidelines, all the guys are jumping around.
“When Dalton scored, the whole stadium broke out into a party.”
Demski was referring to Schoen’s leaping, 64-yard pass-and-run in the fourth quarter, arguably the most spectacular in Schoen’s spectacular rookie season.
“There’s a lot of plays throughout the course of the game that are important,” Schoen said. “But it is definitely a special feeling when you score at home and the crowd erupts. Also a special feeling when you score on the road and the crowd goes silent.”
Not all touchdown passes are created equal, though.
Sure, a two-yarder puts the same points on the board. But it doesn’t inject the same charge into the crowd, or the team.
“There is more of a fun factor, I guess, about the deep ball and the crazy play,” Schoen said.
The touchdown that stands out for Schoen wasn’t last week’s, but rather his second scoring grab in B.C., Week 5.
It came on a broken play, when Collaros spun away from the rush, rolled to his left, torqued his hips open and, in Schoen’s words, “ripped it.”
“He told me ‘When I let it go I thought there was no way you’d get there.’ I was like, ‘When you let it go, I thought there was no way I would get there at all.’ Honestly, I just threw my body out there, just hoping beyond hope. And I have no idea, still to this day, how I was able to bring that in.”
For the passer, touchdown passes are a bit like surgery. They take a touch.
Or rather, a split-second decision on what kind of touch to put on the ball, based on how the defender is positioned, what the quarterback knows about him – and what he knows about his receiver.
“You’re processing it in real time,” Collaros said. “That’s why the (practice) reps are so important, as well as trying to study the film and study body language of defenders.”
You can’t hit the pause button on real-time action, though.
So much goes into a touchdown pass – the routes, the reads, the blocking, not to mention the actual throw – in so little time.
“It’s two and a half seconds, sometimes three – I doubt it’s ever three,” Collaros said. “But those are precious seconds and our guys do a really good job.”
At 34, Collaros is getting better.
He’s also hitting the long ball more often and better than anyone.
“Deep balls are fun,” he said. “Especially when it’s something you had schemed up for a team and everything works out exactly the way you thought it would.”
Collaros’s four scoring passes against the Riders covered 36, 25, 42 and 64 yards.
“I love his deep ball,” Demski said. “I always trust Zach’s going to make the throw, no matter what. There’s some times, even this year, that it might not always be the right read… but his type of throw makes it the right read. He puts it to a spot and puts so much air under it and trusts our players to run it down.”
In back-to-back, fourth-quarter possessions last week, three plays covered 134 yards and produced two Collaros TD strikes.
A more run-of-the-mill touchdown, say, a quarterback sneak, can’t reproduce that kind of magic.
“It looked different than maybe it has,” head coach Mike O’Shea acknowledged. “So it’s probably exciting. Depends on who you ask, too. If you ask the O-line, they probably really enjoy eight or nine run plays in a row.”
Demski has scored both ways, 22 times in his CFL career, combined.
But there’s something about the touchdown catches that stay with him, even going back to university.
“I remember most of them,” he said. “There’s a couple, maybe at U of M or something. But I remember all my pro touchdowns, for sure.”
pfriesen@postmedia.com
Twitter: @friesensunmedia
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