THE 46 DISCOURSE

The Devin Hester: Devin Hester (2006-2013) – Whenever there’s a football player who’s super-fast and/or super-quick, you always hear the phrase “he’s a threat to score any time he touches the ball,” and it’s usually an exaggeration. Sure, Johnny Punt Return is good – hence the name – but if he gets pinned deep and the blocking isn’t there, he’s usually screwed. But for at least two years, Devin Hester really was that guy. Hell, his college nickname was Devin “Anytime” Hester. (Until Bears fans came up with that “Windy City Flyer” nickname that was some straight-up leather helmet nonsense.) Every time there was a kickoff, every time there was a punt, and that one time when there was a really long field goal, you’d lean a little closer to the TV, because the man was unstoppable. A kick return for a touchdown changed from a pleasant surprise to something you expected. Opposing teams started just giving the ball to the Bears with incredibly good field position, because it was a better strategy to punt the ball out of bounds as soon as possible at the 35 yard line than to risk Hester getting his hands on the ball at the 15. Hell, after a while, people started just taking the illegal procedure penalty and kicking out of bounds on kickoffs. It was unrealistic, to the point where your first instinct is to compare it to watching Michael Jordan in his prime, but then you realize that’s an insufficient comparison, and you have to move up to video games. 2006-07 Devin Hester was Tecmo Super Bowl Bo Jackson in real life. That’s it. That’s the only valid comparison to what was happening, like if he had been a less humble man, he would’ve just run to the one yard line, then reversed field and done a full lap around the field before actually scoring, but he didn’t, because he felt sorry for us, and an ill-timed Rex Grossman interception had us down by ten. The opening kickoff of Super Bowl XLI will probably always be my favorite Bears memory, (Look, I watched Super Bowl XX, but I was 5, so I had no idea what was going on beyond “FRIDGE GOOD” or whatever) because for one brief moment, it felt like holy shit, they’re actually going to do this. Of course, the rest of the game could best be described as a wroth Old Testament Jehova saying “lol no,” but at least we had that one play. In the end, nothing gold can stay, so he came back down to human levels eventually, but prime Devin Hester was a phenomenon, like an unbelievable tall tale unfolding in front of our eyes, roping a tornado and carving out the Grand Canyon, and then doing the Deion Sanders Primetime dance into legend. We didn’t watch Devin Hester, we bore witness to him, like Robert Oppenheimer watching the first nuclear bomb test, except Devin’s cool, he never hurt nobody.

Continue reading 1990-2017 Devin-Time Hesters: Kick Returners