Found December 26, 2011 on Just Sports And Just Us: Yardbarker Blogger Network

In one of the clumsiest looking plays this NFL season, Arizona Cardinals receiver Early Doucet let a possible game tying touchdown go by the wayside.



Wide open Early Doucet stumbles on potential game-tying score


On the game's most critical play, Arizona's Early Doucet makes a blunder he may never forget.

Early Doucet showed on Saturday that there's something more embarrassing than dropping an easy, game-changing touchdown pass while wide open: not even getting a chance to drop an easy, game-changing touchdown pass while wide open.

The Arizona Cardinals wide receiver didn't have a defender within 10 yards of him on a fourth-down pass from John Skelton. All he had to do was go get the lofted throw and the Cardinals would have been an extra point away from tying the Cincinnati Bengals. Doucet didn't get that far though, as he stumbled near the goal line and fell to the ground as the pass bounced incomplete.

At 7-7, Arizona's playoff chances were somewhere between slim and none, so Doucet's tumble wasn't exactly a season-ender. Had he stayed upright, it could have been for Cincinnati though. Now, the Bengals are 8-7 and stand a good chance of winning the AFC's final wild card next weekend.

Larry Fitzgerald Sr. simply thinks Doucet doesn't work hard enough to be an NFL receiver.

“Early Doucet bombed this year he drops to many passes not a dependable No.2. Needs to work harder at his job. He dropped 5 TDs this year,” Larry Fitzgerald Sr. wrote on Twitter.

Senior went on to talk to Mike Sando of ESPN.com, saying that Junior invited Doucet to work out during the lockout and Doucet declined.

“I just know that Larry invited him to come and work out with him this summer and some guys take initiative and do it, some guys don’t,” Fitzgerald Sr. said. “But with the lockout, I thought he would have worked on it a little harder. That is me. People criticize me because they think I talk too much. That is just how I see it.”


“I wasn’t picking on him,” Fitzgerald Sr. said. “I track when he drops the ball in critical situations. They use Larry the way they are going to use him, so they know others are going to be singled [in coverage]. The Ravens game, he dropped one on the goal line. I remember other games. Now that they’re out of the playoffs, I’m putting it out there.”

Talk about a biased opinion. If you're not picking on Doucet then what are you doing? He might as well have called out the rest of the Cardinals receiving corps while he was throwing Doucet under the bus.

Can you imagine the conversation between Fitzgerald Jr. and Doucet. Awkward.


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