Zay Jones hadn't scored a touchdown in nearly two years before the Raiders wide receiver hauled in a 15-yard TD reception in the second quarter Monday night against the New Orleans Saints.
A lot has changed since he last found the end zone on Dec. 31, 2018. For one, Jones no longer is a member of the Buffalo Bills. For another, he scored Monday during the Raiders' first-ever game in Las Vegas, which was played in front of no fans at Allegiant Stadium due to restrictions stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.
Jones, naturally, celebrated in 2020-appropriate fashion, pantomiming the distribution of hand sanitizer to his teammates.
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So much for social distance.
Just trying to explain this to someone on the day Jones last scored a regular-season TD.
"Not only will Jones next score on the Raiders," you'd have hypothetically said at the time, "but the Raiders' move to Las Vegas will have been delayed a year, just in time to be completed in the middle of a deadly pandemic that precludes any fans from seeing it happen in person but not the league from recouping TV revenue. On top of that, he'll celebrate by acting as if he's using the next-best method -- using soap and water is preferred -- of washing one's hands in order to limit the spread of the virus causing the pandemic!"
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Every word in those sentences is more ridiculous than the last, and you'd have been laughed out of the room before you had a chance to explain the rest of what's going on as of Sept. 21, 2020.
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No one event will be tidy enough to encapsulate the awful, ridiculous and everything-in-between things that have happened in the first 265 days of the year. Jones' sanitizer celebration, performed with fans watching from home during the greatest public-health crisis of just about every American's lifetime, certainly comes close.
I don't want to imagine how he could've gotten any closer.
