That play

Already, up there where it's cold and purple, they've got a name for it: The Minnesota Miracle. That's what we do when things happen that make you literally grab your head. That's what we do when someone's dangling from the last frayed strands of the rope, and they need Bud Grant or Fran Tarkenton or the Purple People Eaters to materialize and use the Force, or some such mystical thing.

The Minnesota Miracle. The Immaculate Reception II. The "Why Isn't Jack Buck Here To Say 'I Don't Believe What I Just Saw!'" Play.

Because listen, Case Keenum-to-Stefon Diggs was all of that and more. Start with the desperation: The Vikings were down one, there were 10 seconds on the clock, they had no timeouts. And they still needed  a chunk of yards to get into field goal range.

And so Keenum reared back and threw the deep ball to Diggs. It was, of course, a play in which the Vikings had never thrown to the deep man, even in practice. But New Orleans safety Marcus Williams, trying to avoid pass interference as he'd been instructed, hesitated a millisecond too long with the ball in the air. Diggs climbed the ladder and caught it, Williams missed the tackle -- and suddenly Diggs was somehow putting his hand down to stay upright, and then there was nothing but green carpet between him and immortality.

A Miracle, with all the ingredients. And, because this is who we are these days, one more: The inclination to pick at the magic by choosing to emphasize what poor Williams didn't do rather than what Keenum and Diggs did.

Almost immediately after the play, see, social media lit up like a Saturn 5. A lot of it was not about what a great play it was. A lot of it was about what a horrible defensive play it was, and how Williams would probably be cut before he got on the plane back to New Orleans, and how it would go down as one of the worst defensive breakdowns in NFL history.

Not, you know, that it would go down as one of the most memorable finishes in NFL history.

Look. I get it. Negativity is what social media does best, especially in the Age of Our Only Available President. Safe behind our faceless devices, we fire away in a manner we'd never have the nuggets to if we were face-to-face. Human contact tends to breed a certain civility, even in contentious situations. Lack of it breeds the opposite.

And so it was heavy on the negative last night. And light on perspective.

Here's the thing about plays like the Minnesota Miracle, see: They almost always contain two essential elements. One, someone has to make a great play. Two, someone else has to allow it to happen. You rarely get one without the other.

Doug Flutie's fabled Hail Mary to Gerard Phelan, for instance, doesn't happen if the Miami Hurricanes don't allow Phelan to get behind not one but two DBs on the last play of the game.  Ken Stabler's "Sea of Hands" touchdown to Clarence Davis doesn't happen if one of the three Miami Dolphins surrounding him knocks the ball away. And the original Immaculate Reception doesn't happen if that Oakland Raiders defensive back gets to Terry Bradshaw's wobbler a millisecond quicker, avoiding the hit that causes the ball to ricochet to Franco Harris.

In every case, what didn't happen is as important as what did. The difference is, there was no social media then to pick at those plays, to tweet "What a horrible defensive play! How could the Hurricanes let that guy get behind them in that situation?" or "Good lord, the Dolphins had three guys around him! Terrible defense!"

They wouldn't have been wrong about that, of course. But why ruin the magic?