THE OCTOPUS
While I have many things I’m proud of from my nine years at Sports Illustrated, the one I am probably most known for is the octopus. Because a lot has been written about it over the past few years (much, but not all, by me), I figured I should create a page on my site that explains it all and offers links for anyone who wants a deeper dive (ocean joke).
What is an octopus?
An octopus is when the same player scores a touchdown and then scores the ensuing two-point conversion on the same drive. They must actually score, not be the QB throwing for a score.
When and how was the octopus invented?
I came up with the concept on the Sunday of Week 6 in 2018, when I sent the following tweet into the void:
My friend Mike Wallace responded to suggest octopus, and I immediately decided his was the right answer.
How did it take off from there?
I continued tweeting about it (recurring theme) and then wrote a piece for The MMQB in March 2019 that explained it and introduced a bunch of fun facts (most in a career, most in a game, first in the playoffs, number by each team), along with a list of every one ever.
The story also had great artwork from SI’s graphic designer, Bryce Wood.
And you kept writing about it every offseason?
Yeah! As it kept growing, I kept finding new ways to write about everything octopus-related I had done or tracked each year. Here are those links, with highlights of the fun stuff inside.
July 2020: I wrote about the first season after my article helped call more attention to it. It caught on more than I ever expected in one season, culminating in Caesars being the first sportsbook to offer it as a prop bet for the Super Bowl. They would have had a six-figure loss if it had hit, making the octopus their biggest liability on the board. This led to more media exposure: segments on ESPN and elsewhere that are chronicled in that story.
July 2021: In my second annual year in review, I wrote about how the term gained significantly more attention during the 2020 season, thanks largely to NFL RedZone’s Scott Hanson. Hanson spent the season talking about my baby on TV every time one hit on a Sunday afternoon. In my piece, I interviewed Hanson and CBS’s Andrew Catalon, who called out the octopus during a live game. I also interviewed a player about it for the first time. I gave Rams RB Cam Akers my Octopus of the Year award for a great one he had during the playoffs, and we discussed his exciting scores. He was a good sport about all of it, even though his team lost the game. Come Super Bowl time, the prop bet was offered at more places besides Caesars: Circa, DraftKings, etc.
July 2022: Once again I bestowed my award on a player, this time having a great interview with Ravens TE Mark Andrews to talk about a personally meaningful night in which he scored two octopi to erase a 16-point deficit. One new advancement for the 2021 season is that I convinced Dave Mattingly, the creator of the better-known scorigami bot on Twitter, to create an octopus bot. It spent the whole 2021 season tweeting after every successful two-point conversion to let people know whether it was an octopus. As of January 2024, the bot is up to nearly 8,000 followers.
July 2023: In the fourth season of sportsbooks offering octopus props, Jalen Hurts became the first player ever (not just in those four years) to have one in a Super Bowl. And he did it to tie Super Bowl LVII between the Eagles and Chiefs at 35–35 late in the fourth quarter. This led to even more attention for the term, including funny videos of prop bettors filming themselves as it cashed during the game. There were also great podcast clips of media members having no idea what it meant, which I have also kept track of over the years. Despite losing the game, Hurts was also a good sport and spoke to me briefly about winning my annual octopus award.
Has anything cool happened during the 2023 season?
One big one: The fine folks at Pro Football Reference created a page on their site that lists all 188 of them (that’s the total heading into Super Bowl LVIII). Their researches were instrumental in providing me with a list for the original story from March 2019, and I credited them at the time.
This really means a lot to me. I have spent untold hours of my life scrolling through all the Sports Reference sites doing research for work, querying fun facts and looking up random numbers to entertain myself. I feel honored to have inspired a page there.
What else should I know?
We’ve built a fun little community! I also have a few possible updates coming this offseason that I think people will like. If you want to make sure you get that news:
The octopus Twitter bot is used infrequently, just live tweets during games and rare updates about articles, bets or fun stuff. Because many people are fleeing Twitter, I created accounts on Threads and BlueSky just to grab the usernames, but they have small followings and are not yet automated. Hopefully they will be at some point.
You can also follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Threads or BlueSky for any updates, and I’d really love it if you signed up for my mailing list that I use a few times a year to share any exciting news.
Will I ever watch two-point conversions the same way again, now that I know about this?
Probably not, but it’s been fun for a lot of other people so don’t worry about it.