Never before has reality so mimicked art. Never before has a football moment been so emblematically tied to its glitchy video game counterpart. Every Madden player in the fucking room has done this at least once. You’re up by a point. The opponent is on their 40-yard line. There’s ten seconds left and they’ve got no timeouts. The game’s not over, but it’s basically over. Hail Mary pass goes up and you, not thinking, go for the big hit to put a humiliating stamp on the loss. You somehow whiff an unwhiffable gimme of a hit, you take out the only other defender who could catch him, and the receiver goes untouched into the end zone. You fling your controller against the wall, shattering the $45 joystick into a thousand pieces. Your mom tells you to shut up. You tell her to shut up. Your heart is broken. Your hubris has cost you. You swear to never play Madden again. This happens all the time.

I’ve never seen a highlight that so perfectly captures a video game moment as this. I give it one week at the most before someone has replicated this and done a side-by-side comparison that is indistinguishable. When you watch the replay it’s clear that Marcus Williams just hit the hit stick in the wrong direction. Classic. Happens more often than it should. I live and die by the hit stick. Actually, I really just die by the hit stick, which is why I don’t really play Madden anymore.

I used to be okay at Madden when they were just starting to try to make defense an important part of it again. I prided myself as being a defensive Madden guy, but then they added all of these extra buttons and they actually made defense important, and then I sucked. There’s no other way to say it. I am terrible: I “Marcus Williams” on every play. I line up the hit perfectly and then tackle 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Some people are good at Madden, and I’m not one of those people anymore. I used to make little kids cry, and now I’m the one crying.

So Marcus Williams, I’m sure this sucks, but you’re not alone. Thousands, no millions, of players have done this before and a million will do it again. You do what any of these players have done before you: you break the fuck out of that controller and you buy a new one. Those sticks were messed up anyway.