Cody Ford makes NFL history thanks to what he didn’t know before creating his highlight for the ages
It’s a good thing Cody Ford was unaware of what Bengals HC Zac Taylor wanted.
Cody Ford is not the first NFL player to record a 21-yard reception, but he is the first NFL player of his kind to get that far down the field after catching the ball.
Per NFL senior researcher Dante Koplowitz-Fleming, Ford became the heaviest player in league history to have a play exceeding 20 yards from scrimmage at 345 pounds with his 21-yard catch-and-run during the Cincinnati Bengals’ 37-14 win over the Arizona Cardinals.
We’ve seen big man carries, fumble recoveries, and goal line catches for touchdowns, but never a catch-and-run quite like this from one of the biggest players on the team. The funny part is Ford wasn’t even the second-heaviest player on the field for this play. Starting offensive tackles Orlando Brown Jr. and Amarius Mims are each 350 pounds according to Bengals.com.
No matter his weight, he certainly covered a lot more ground than anyone expected. You can thank what was going through his mind for that, as well as what he didn’t know.
Lack of communication helped make Cody Ford’s highlight play happen
Bengals head coach Zac Taylor told reporters after the game he wanted Ford to hit the deck pretty much right as he caught the ball.
“I wanted him just to go down,” Taylor said. “Get the four [yards], go down, put us in the second-and-6, and he just kept breaking tackles. That was pretty impressive.”
That was not made known to Ford, and once the ball was in his hands, no coaching point was going to reach him.
“If he would have told me that (he wanted me to go down), I probably would have did it,” Ford told The Athletic’s Paul Dehner Jr. “He didn’t expose that to me, so I thought I had free rein to do whatever. If I would have had to shake somebody, I would have tried.
“I just kept running. I had my head down because I was kind of treating it like a 40-yard dash.”
And because of that mindset, we have a play for the all-time Bengals highlight reel.
Ford had not touched the football since recovering two fumbles as a rookie back in 2019. Barring another record-setting play, he will never experience a touch quite like this. Thank goodness he didn’t know what his coach wanted from him.