The NFL preseason can crush dreams. Haynes King made one come true

Haynes King may never take an NFL snap again. But for one night, for one play, the undrafted quarterback for the Carolina Panthers lived out every player’s, every fan’s, dream. There are worse NFL legacies to leave. 

For fringe undrafted players, the NFL preseason is a special kind of hell. You’re so close to achieving your dream you can literally touch it. You get a jersey with your name stitched on it, a helmet with the logo of a team you’ve followed for years. You walk down the same hallways, smack pads on the same fields as the stars of the game. 

All the while, your connection with the team is more tenuous than your relationship with a bartender or barista. At least with them, you know you’ll be getting a drink. As anyone who’s watched 10 minutes of HBO’s “Hard Knocks” knows, the call to meet with the coach — and bring your playbook — could come at any moment. 

But every so often, everything breaks just right, and the opportunity for glory stretches before you. For King, that opportunity came with two seconds left on the clock in Thursday night’s Hall of Fame game against Arizona. King had gone 21 of 34 for 180 yards and two touchdowns, hadn’t taken a sack or given up a turnover, and had rushed for 34 yards. But the Panthers were still down 30-27, and five yards away from the end zone. So King handled matters himself:  

Don’t tell the players a preseason game is meaningless. 

King’s desperation scramble came as absolutely no surprise to Georgia Tech fans. As a Yellow Jacket, King had a habit of solving problems by hurling his body at them, a technique which works remarkably well in the ACC but probably won’t hold up in the NFL. Still, sometimes the brute force solution is the right one. Who wants to throw the ball away or take a game-ending sack in that situation when you can run in the direction of glory? You never know, you might just grab it. 

“It was a dream come true,” King said after the game, per Pro Football Talk. “Growing up, you hear about all these first-ballot Hall of Famers, and to see some of them walking in front of you before the game is pretty amazing. And to be able to showcase your talent in front of them is a dream come true.”

All too often, the NFL preseason is a grim march of bad news. There’s nothing worse than a season-ending preseason injury. And when cuts come, they don’t just end seasons, they often end careers. A game that a player has played since childhood, a dream they’ve dreamed all their lives, the hopes and ambitions of an entire community around them, all end on a Tuesday afternoon in a coach’s office somewhere far from the stadium crowds. It’s a brutal time, but it’s the business. And it’s not for everyone, which is why the ones who survive the gauntlet deserve all the praise they’ll receive. 

King is currently listed at third on the Panthers’ depth chart, a spot that’s not unlike being the third choice for a prom date. Several very bad things have to happen for you to get the call, and you can get replaced the moment that an even slightly more appealing candidate comes along. Still, he’s in the building, and he had the entire Panthers sideline behind him Thursday night. That’s not nothing.  

“Haynes is a fantastic athlete and he just finds a way to win, and that’s what he did,” Panthers head coach Dave Canales said after the game. “Really proud of the group and also proud of the whole team celebrating. That’s something we pride ourselves on, celebrating how hard we work on these situations and then watching it come alive.”

Absolutely no disrespect intended to King or any of the hundreds of other players like him who are on NFL rosters now but probably won’t be come September. The truth is that most of them are headed to jobs outside of football, and for all of them, that day will come sooner than they’d like. 

But before the sun sets on their football days, they’ll get a moment like King had on Thursday night. They may not achieve that NFL career, but they’ll have a story to tell forever.