Green Bay Packers cornerback Jaire Alexander nearly made a costly mistake for the team before Sunday’s game against the Carolina Panthers even started.
During a pregame coin toss, the winner of the coin toss has a few options. They can choose to either receive the kickoff, kick the ball off themselves, choose which direction they would like to play, or defer their decision to the second half. But Alexander seemingly got a little confused.
Instead of deferring the decision to the second half, Alexander initially told the referee that the Packers wanted to play defense first. If the referee didn’t clarify, that would have meant that the Panthers would have had the ball to start both halves of the game.
Packers coach Matt LaFleur was not pleased with this blunder.
“That was a big mistake,” LaFleur said of Alexander’s call according to ESPN. “That’s something that you review with the guys before they go out there every time about, ‘Hey, we win the toss, we’re going to defer.’ I went to the officials before the game, made sure they knew what we were going to do. We had an incident earlier this year where we had a similar situation, so always trying to be proactive in that approach.”
Alexander, meanwhile, didn’t seem to even realize he had made a mistake. But thankfully for him and the Packers, referee Alex Kemp clarified, and the Packers successfully deferred the decision to the second half.
“I said, ‘I want our defense to be out there,’ and they all looked at me like I was crazy,” Alexander said. “I’m like, I mean it’s pretty simple what I said, like I want the defense to be out there. They like, ‘You mean defer?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I guess.'”
It could have been a costly mistake, but it was avoided.
