The Longest Five Seconds in Football

Last Sunday, a five-foot-nine St. Louis Rams football player named Tavon Austin caught a punt on his team’s twenty-five-yard line and ran it all the way down the sideline as the Seattle Seahawks’ entire vaunted defense fell helplessly behind him. His seventy-five-yard touchdown return helped the lowly Rams beat the Super Bowl-favorite Seahawks in week one of what is likely to be the most scrutinized N.F.L. season in history. It was a “highwire act” and the result of Austin “switch[ing] on the afterburners,” in the parlance of Twitter and “SportsCenter.” Austin’s own take: “I jumped off the porch and went north!!”