Carolina Panthers safety Mike Minter thought he had derailed a Kyle Boller pass last Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium that could have sealed a Carolina win. Time was ticking down, and the Panthers were clinging to a 16-7 lead against the Ravens.
“I thought it was over,” Minter said. “I tipped the ball ? it looked like this is it ? then I hear their crowd going crazy, then I see my man, [No.] 89, running into the end zone. I said, ?Man this is crazy.?”
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Minter?s man was second-year Ravens receiver Mark Clayton, who came up with the exhilarating catch and ran down the sideline for a 62-yard touchdown to cut the Panthers? lead to 16-14 with 4:33 left in the game. It was the second tipped pass Clayton claimed for a score that day. He finished the game, which Carolina won, 23-21, with five catches for 101 yards.
Clayton said the catch, dismissed as a fluke by some, was not drawn up.
“Not in my wildest dreams,” he said. “But God has a strange way of drawing things up.”
Clayton showed glimpses of promise last season when he grabbed 44 passes for 471 yards and four touchdowns. Through their first five games this season, the Ravens had been trying to get the ball into the hands oftheir 2005 first-round draft pick with mixed results. Going into Sunday?s game, the potential playmaker had 186 yards on 20 catches with no touchdowns.
With Clayton, fellow wideout Derrick Mason and tight end Todd Heap this year, the Ravens were hoping for a three-headed monster that new quarterback Steve McNair could find at any given moment for big yardage. The offense proved too stagnant for the tastes of players and head coach Brian Billick after six weeks, resulting in coordinator Jim Fassel?s firing earlier this week.
“If you remember early on, Todd Heap and Derrick Mason were having big games and it was, ‘Where’s Mark?'” Billick said before the Carolina game. “Well, now Mark is having some big games and the combination with whomever else that is, and then they’ll start to focus on that and all of a sudden you’ll see Derrick have a big game. Fortunately, with those three guys particularly, we can hopefully make that a moving target.”
Clayton decided that if the ball was not being thrown his way, he would go find it .
“We knew we needed to make a play,” Clayton said. “We needed to put points on the board because obviously Carolina was scoring and we had to match what they did, and obviously 21 was not enough to beat 23.”
