Adonai Mitchell officially appears to be off the hook.
Arizona Cardinals running back Emari Demercado produced the most boneheaded (and costly) blunder of Week 5 during his team’s game on Sunday against the Tennessee Titans. In the fourth quarter at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., Demercado got the ball on a 3rd-and-1 play and found daylight up the middle.
Waltzing through the Titans defense virtually untouched, Demercado took it all the way to the house for a 72-yard touchdown … or so he thought. Lo and behold, it happened again in the NFL as Demercado began celebrating too early and let go of the ball before crossing the goal line.
The ball then rolled out of the back of the end zone, wiping out the touchdown and giving a touchback to the Titans instead. Here is the unbelievable video.
Cardinals RB Emari Demercado with a 72-yard touchdown run, but he dropped the ball before the goal line… pic.twitter.com/JPMm726fDO
— Arye Pulli (@AryePulliNFL) October 5, 2025
That play was eerily similar to the one that we saw with the Indianapolis Colts receiver Mitchell last week. During a game against the Los Angeles Rams, Mitchell also scampered free for what should have been a walk-in touchdown … only to also drop the ball before crossing the goal line and negate the TD (see the video here).
Mitchell ultimately ended up being demoted by the Colts for the idiotic move. But one could definitely argue that Demercado’s folly was much worse.
For one, nobody had even touched Demercado on that entire play, so he can’t even make the argument that he got rattled by the defense. For another, Demercado was auditioning for the Cardinals’ starting running back gig with James Conner (foot) out for the season and Trey Benson (knee) subsequently landing on injured reserve as well.
And for the final coup de grace, Arizona ended up completely collapsing from there, despite holding a 21-6 lead at the time of Demercado’s doozy. They allowed Tennessee to score 16 straight points to close the game and lost on a walkoff field goal by Titans kicker Joey Slye.
IT'S GOOD! @TITANS WIN!
Cam Ward and Tennessee pick up their first win of the season on Joey Slye's game-winnerpic.twitter.com/iYKeW9q9qp
— NFL (@NFL) October 5, 2025
As a result, Demercado can now say that he a) just lost the starting RB job to Michael Carter (who finished the game with 18 carries to Demercado’s three) and b) lost Sunday’s game for the Cardinals entirely. What a disaster.