What does an octopus have to do with the NFL?

A casual conversation during the Super Bowl introduced me to a frivolous football term.

Last week the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX, the NFL’s equivalent of the Grand Final.

The Eagles, who set up the 40-22 win after dominating the first three quarters, claimed their second Vince Lombardi Trophy, having defeated Tom Brady and the New England Patriots 41-33 back in Super Bowl LII.

Every year a group of friends and I take the day off and watch the game together. Sometimes we watch it at a pub in the city, sometimes we sit and watch it at someone’s house. It’s a nice tradition we’ve had for the last decade.

And while I like to think I have a reasonable level of knowledge and understanding about the game of American football, one of my friends introduced me to a term I hadn’t heard of before while we were watching: an octopus.

Now, I obviously know what an octopus is in real life – but I hadn’t heard about what it means in a footballing context.

This article from The Sporting News explains things pretty clearly:

“In football terms, an Octopus refers to when a player scores a touchdown, then follows it up by scoring a two-point conversion.”

As a bit of background, scoring a touchdown – carrying or catching the ball into the opposition’s end zone – earns a player six points. Importantly, the six points go to the player who caught or carried the ball, not the person that threw it.

After a team scores a touchdown, there are two ways they can add to their score. The team can kick the ball through the uprights – like they would for a field goal – for one point, or they can run a play – and try to score another touchdown – for two points.

If the team fails either the one-point or the two-point attempt, they get nothing.

So, if a player gets six points for the touchdown plus an additional two from the conversion after the touchdown, they have scored a total of eight points… octopi have eight limbs… you get the picture.

As someone who loves unique statistical quirks such as this, I was fascinated by the concept of the Octopus and wanted to see what else I could learn about it.

The NFL introduced the concept of a two-point conversion ahead of the 1994 season, and the first successful two-point conversion took place in the Week 1 matchup between the Cleveland Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals.

Browns quarterback Vinny Testaverde connected with Leroy Hoard on an 11-yard pass for the opening touchdown of the game. But when it came time for the extra point attempt, Cleveland’s punter, backup quarterback, and placekick holder Tom Tupa received the snap and ran the ball in for two instead of letting the kicker do their thing.

“Two-Point Tupa”, as he was named shortly after, would successfully two further two-point attempts over the course of the season. But he never scored an Octopus, according to Pro Football Reference’s list of players who have achieved this particular feat.

The first recorded Octopi occurred a week after Tupa scored the first two-point conversion against the Bengals, when Torrence Small (New Orleans Saints) and Rob Moore (New York Jets) both scored a touchdown and the two-point conversion in their respective games against the then-Washington Redskins and the Denver Broncos on the Sunday.

A third Octopus in Week 2 also occurred during the Monday night game, when Curtis Conway backed up his 85-yard receiving touchdown for the Chicago Bears with a catch on the subsequent two-point conversion against the Eagles in the final quarter.

I find it impressive that there were three Octopi recorded in only the second week of it being possible, given there have only been 197 Octopi in the NFL in total since the two-point conversion was introduced.

A three-Octopus week (a record; there has never been a four Octopi week) has only ever happened four times in history:

• Week 2, 1994 – as described above

• Week 14, 1994 – Jeff Blake (Bengals), Willie Davis (Kansas City Chiefs), and Jerome Bettis (Los Angeles Rams)

• Week 1, 2020 – Robbie Chosen (Carolina Panthers), Dalvin Cook (Minnesota Vikings), and Adam Thielen (Vikings)

• Week 12, 2023 – CeeDee Lamb (Dallas Cowboys), David Montgomery (Detroit Lions), and Calvin Ridley (Jacksonville Jaguars)

Cook and Thielen’s efforts against the Green Bay Packers in 2021 is the first and only instance where two teammates registered an Octopi in the same game. Both Octopi occurred in the final quarter but ultimately accounted for nought as Minnesota lost 43-34 after being down 22-10 at half time.

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed a larger-than-normal jump in the total number of Octopi somewhere between 2015 and 2020. This happened in 2018, when a record 15 Octopi were recorded over the course of the season.

A key contributor to this record was former Rams and Atlanta Falcons running back Todd Gurley, who notched up three Octopi that year – a single-season record. He registered two Octopi in Week 2 of the 2018 season against the Arizona Cardinals, and another six weeks later against Green Bay.

Gurley’s two Octopi in a single game has only been matched once since then, by the Baltimore Ravens’ Mark Andrews in Week 5 of the 2021 season. The tight end served up back-to-back Octopi on drives in the final quarter – with the second tying the scores in the final minute of the game.

Baltimore, who were trailing the Indianapolis Colts 25-9 with 12 minutes to play, went on to win the game 31-25 in overtime courtesy of a five-yard reception to Marquise Brown.

Gurley, the 2017 Offensive Player of the Year, is also the all-time Octopus leader. His fourth and final Octopus occurred in week 15 of 2019 against the Cowboys. Davante Adams and Randy Moss (three each) sit in second place, ahead of 27 players with two Octopi and 133 players with a single mollusc to their name.

All 32 NFL teams have registered and conceded at least one Octopus during the three decades it has been part of the game, but there are some teams that have been far more successful than others.

For example, the Rams and the Lions have both scored 10 Octopi, but the fact that Detroit have given up more than twice as many cephalopods as the Rams gives the latter a much better differential than the former.

Special points to the Pittsburgh Steelers, for being the only team to have scored and conceded the same number of Octopi.

One thing I find particularly interesting is how the Octopus was scored. The touchdown and the subsequent two-point conversion can be achieved by a pass (throwing the ball to a player) or by rushing (running the ball without throwing it).

It makes sense that having both the touchdown and the two-point conversion achieved by passes is the most popular way of achieving an Octopus, given the pass-heavy offenses in the league over the last two or three decades.

But I didn’t think there would be twice as many pass-pass Octopi compared to rush-rush and nearly eight times as many pass-rush or rush-pass combination.

You can following along with whether or not two-point conversions are Octopi when the NFL returns next season – thanks to the efforts of Mitch Goldich, the Sports Illustrated writer who coined the term together with his friend Michael Wallace and former Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith – on Bluesky.