Maybe the moment becomes magic because, all of a sudden, a million-dollar pro athlete reminds you exactly of your out-of-shape cousin Otto.
But when a roly-poly NFL lineman finds himself with the football and takes off down the field, seemingly plodding through a sea of oatmeal, the ensuing chase is thrilling and comical and sort of touching all at the same time.
In the first two weeks of the season, Ravens fans have been treated on successive Sundays to just that sort of entertaining spectacle, as twice beefy hometown heroes have come up with errant balls. Both times, their sprints wound down to jogs and ended in wheezing finishes along the sideline.
On Sunday, it was 6-foot, 310-pound defensive tackle Kelly Gregg returning a fumble 59 yards - a team record, by the way - and being nudged out of bounds and lying exhausted at the Oakland Raiders' 15-yard line in the Ravens' 28-6 win. The week before, 6-foot-4, 340-pound rookie Haloti Ngata went 60 yards with an interception before he ran out of gas and tiptoed out of bounds in a 27-0 shutout of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
"A defensive lineman has just one speed, and that's however fast he can run," said former Ravens big-guy defensive tackle Tony Siragusa, now an analyst for Fox Sports. "With the skill guys, it's not just how fast they can run, it's how fast they can stop and change direction. A defensive lineman isn't built to do that. If he starts thinking about making a cut or something, every ligament and cartilage in his body screams out, `Don't do it, don't do it!'"
A chubby guy under a full head of steam with a football under his arm is such great sports theater, the scene invariably makes national sports news.
In 2003, Buffalo Bills defensive tackle Sam Adams made the cover of Sports Illustrated for his 37-yard touchdown return of an interception against the New England Patriots. For the 350-pound Adams, a former Raven now with the Cincinnati Bengals, it wasn't even his first interception taken for a touchdown. He had brought back another one 25 yards against Troy Aikman and the Dallas Cowboys in 1998.
Most of the time, though, big people wearing 90-something on their backs who unexpectedly find themselves with the ball do not wind up doing celebration shimmies in the end zone.
The Seattle Seahawks' now-retired 306-pound defensive tackle Cortez Kennedy made two interceptions in 1999 but returned them for a total of just 12 yards.
