4 Crucial Rules of End Zone Celebration Etiquette
When it comes to the game of football, even those not enthused by the game can find some entertainment in the ritual known as the touchdown celebration. While most just come off as silly or kind of cool, throughout the season fans are treated to some laughably bad ones. We've put together a short guide that will hopefully help players avoid these mistakes in the future.
Don't Blow Your Signature Celebration
After catching his first touchdown of the season, the New England Patriots' personal Incredible Hulk, Rob Gronkowski, went for his signature move, the Gronk Spike, when this happened:
It's one thing to mess up your signature move; that alone should happen rarely, if ever. But when your "signature move" is literally the exact same move that NFL players have been doing for decades now, the transgression is substantially worse.
Look Before You Leap
The Lambeau Leap is perhaps the most famous touchdown celebration of all time. Score a touchdown at Lambeau Field, run toward the wall behind the end zone, leap into the crowd. It's that simple. Unless you're huge.
Here you can see Packers tight end Ryan Taylor executing something more akin to the "Lambeau Scale the Wall Like a Person Whose Biceps Have Atrophied from Years of Disuse" while horribly underqualified sideline staff expends every bit of available energy on trying to push this man-beast into the stands. Don't do this.
Be Extra Careful on the Road
The shame of blowing an end zone celebration is bad enough when it happens in front of an adoring home crowd, but you can double that when the transgression happens on the road.
That's San Francisco 49ers tight end Vernon Davis trying the old "Dunk the Football Like It's a Basketball" maneuver and failing terribly. Because this was happening after a touchdown scored by the opposing team, the crowd was completely silent, so not only could you very clearly hear the metallic thud of ineptitude that followed his sad display of athleticism, you could hear the crowd laugh, too. It doesn't get much more embarrassing than that.
Fortunately for Vernon Davis, the NFL has scrubbed any video evidence of this gaffe from the Internet, but they will never take our GIFs.
Don't Hurt Yourself
In times of great jubilation, it's natural to lose your mind. Just do it safely -- especially when the score might not be really important in the grand scheme of things. Take Bill Gramatica, for instance ...
That's the painful aftermath of celebrating a field goal that occurred under the following circumstances:
1. The score was 0-0.
2. It was the first quarter.
3. He was only kicking it from 42 yards -- pretty standard for kickers in the NFL.
Of course, none of this stopped Gramatica from indulging in an excessive celebration that led to him tearing his ACL.
It's an injury that would probably go down as the most hilarious in history if it weren't for the Washington Redskins' Gus Frerotte scoring a first half touchdown ...
... and celebrating by giving himself a concussion. For the record, that dimwit played for a lot of years after that, completely dispelling the theory that quarterback is the position requiring the most intelligence on the field.
Fitzgerald asks that you help a young lady with a rare lung disease have her own goofy celebrations. Donate here.
