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Clark Harris is 38, one of the oldest players in the NFL and shares the distinction, with punter Kevin Huber, of being the longest-tenured Bengals player. He’s been to the playoffs with both Andy Dalton and Joe Burrow. He’s played in a Pro Bowl.
And until yesterday, you’d almost certainly never heard of him.
But Sunday, he became a pivotal figure in a Week 1 game that could have pretty serious implications all the way down the road when the playoffs start in February.
Harris suffered a biceps injury on a 50-yard Huber punt in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s Steelers-Bengals showdown in Cincinnati, one that was quickly found to be serious enough to knock him out of the game and send the Bengals, like any other team would be in that spot, scrambling. Cincinnati has a second long-snapper on its practice squad, but no one dresses two snappers for games; another position player has to be ready in a pinch.
In the Bengals’ case, that someone was backup tight end Mitch Wilcox, another anonymous sort who’d watch his fame swell Sunday in a way he’d never want it to.
This is how Week 1’s most entertaining game evolved, and you could say devolved, into its strangest game. And from the other sideline, Steelers kicker Chris Boswell had taken note of what was going on as he worked through his own situation, and prepared for his shot to take advantage of how that strange situation left the door ajar for him and the Steelers to go win the game.
“We saw [Harris] holding his bicep; I think he attempted a tackle,” Boswell said from the team plane early Sunday night. “We figured it was something he did to his shoulder, maybe because he went in for a tackle and got caught the wrong way. We pray for a speedy recovery for him and hope that it’s not too serious. We didn’t realize the severity of it until they went out there for that PAT.”
That PAT came when all hell was breaking loose across the NFL—with frantic finish after frantic finish unfolding across the league—and after Burrow had somehow, impossibly, come back from five turnovers to find Ja’Marr Chase for a six-yard touchdown to tie the score at 20–20. Normally, that kick is a formality for a team in a situation like that. But in this one, Harris was out, Wilcox was in, and few in Paycor Stadium had even an inkling of it.
They’d know soon enough.
And Boswell would have not one, but two chances to win an important early game—delivering on the last one for his Steelers.
