The words and phrases have been flying around out there, all attached to a video clip that will live forever in pro football lore.
“Other-worldy.” “Insane.” “Stunning.” “Incredible.” “Craziest interception ever.”
On Sunday night, BC Lions rookie defensive back Robert Carter Jr. shot into the internet stratosphere when he pulled off one of the great defensive masterpieces in CFL history with a mind-bending, flying, one-handed pick, robbing Hamilton Ticats’ receiver Brendan O’Leary Orange of what most surely would have been a touchdown catch on a magnificent looking moonshot from quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell.
The greatest interception in CFL history? I think so. At least, I can’t recall one that could top it.
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With the Lions on a bye this week, Carter Jr. was just about to head out on a trip to see his family when he took time out to talk about Sunday night’s play. The native of Danville, Virginia has been far from home for some time now.
“I haven’t seen them in awhile,” Carter Jr. says, looking forward to the trip. “I came straight here from college.”
They’ll have plenty to talk about, including how the 22-year-old has become the talk of the football world for the second time in less than a year.
More on that, later.
But first, Carter Jr.’s insights on play number 63 from Sunday night’s game, one that will live on and on, with many of us wondering if it can ever be topped.
“It feels surreal, I think, each time I see it,” he says.
“It makes me think (back to) that kid in high school, like, five-seven, one hundred and forty pounds. Makes me think back to times like that.”
And how far that kid has come.
ANATOMY OF A VIRAL FOOTBALL MOMENT
DB Robert Carter Jr. signed with the Lions in May of 2025 (Arthur Ward/CFL.ca)
To me, it looks like there are at least three impressive and absolutely necessary physical components to Carter Jr.’s interception; Speed, jumping ability and strength of grip.
Carter Jr. had to stay with O’leary-Orange in order to have a hope. He needed to launch himself high into the air — and forward — to get into position. And he needed a strong hand in order to stop and corral the ball as he pulled it in to his body before he hit the turf and rolled.
Maybe there’s a fourth element at play here. Maybe Carter Jr. is just naturally aerodynamic, and that allows him to hang in mid-air a little bit longer than the average guy. Hollow bones, like a bird, perhaps? I forgot to ask.
On flying ability, maybe he’s just blessed. On the others, it’d be a mixture of blessings and hard work.
When it comes to Carter Jr.’s speed, the five-foot-10, 175-pounder knows he’s got to keep it up, but he did not talk about technique, the way an Olympic sprinter would. “Just maintaining my leg strength,” he says.
“Because you can see I’m really not the tallest person out there, so I’ve got to be able to have that edge. I feel like my speed and being able to jump is my edge on other people.”
His jump on the play was amazing. He leaves the ground at just inside the BC goal line and when he comes down, his landing foot hits about six yards deep. When he pops up with the ball, he’s about 12 yards into the end zone. At the apex of the jump, Carter Jr.’s hips are even with O’Leary-Orange’s shoulders.
That kind of explosive ability is something Carter Jr. says he works on by doing something specific.
“I love single leg squats,” he says. “That’s where the explosiveness comes from.”
Single leg squats are just like usual leg squats, with one important difference. They’re done with one leg up on a bench, so that the other leg takes all the weight as an athlete moves up and down, with a barbell resting over their shoulders.
“Nothing crazy,” says Carter Jr. when asked just how much weight he lifts in that drill. “I would say just 135 pounds. You don’t want your knees to get bad.”
The third component of the play, is all about that hand. This could all be about hand size, one would suppose, but when I ask Carter Jr. if he’s gifted with overly large mitts he laughs.
“I do not have big hands at all,” he says. “Maybe youth-large or adult-small, adult-medium.”
So, it’s strength? Maybe, but not entirely, says Carter Jr. Some of it’s actually his eyes.
“I think I’ve just got a good way of tracking the ball so my hand is right on point to grab the ball, you know?”
And on this element of Carter Jr.’s interception — the grabbing of the ball — an assist actually goes to Hamilton quarterback Bo Levi Mitchell.
Not because of any mistake by Mitchell. Precisely the opposite. It’s because he threw a near-perfect ball, tightly spiralling.
“If that ball had been any type of wobbly, it definitely would have been a PBU (pass break up),” says Carter Jr. “But I think with him throwing a really good spiral it allowed me to really get a grip on the ball.”
It all happened so fast, at least to the eye of the observer. So many plays are like that, even those that aren’t nearly as spectacular as Carter Jr.’s interception. It must all come down to pure reaction. Thousands of hours of training and practice and game experience and film study precede it, and all of that means something. But in the moment? I can’t imagine Carter Jr. had time to think about anything.
That would be wrong. Even in that flash of time, Carter Jr. says, conscious calculations need to be made.
“You think about whether you can catch a ball with one or two hands,” he explains. “At that moment I was thinking ‘can I get my right hand over to grab this ball?’ I couldn’t get my right hand over, so I only had one choice, to grab it with the one hand that I had close to the ball.”
After Carter Jr. made the stab, he pulled the ball in, hit the turf and rolled, quickly getting to his feet. He looked upfield and then hit the accelerator, just for a moment. Was he actually thinking he could make that play even more spectacular? Was he thinking a house call might be in the cards?
“Yes, I was thinking that,” he replies.
“I started running faster because, like, the sideline was clear.”
But in the end, he decided against it.
“I was just being a smart ball player, just going down and let the offence have the ball. Didn’t want anything bad happening.”
The Lions’ offence followed Carter Jr.’s interception by driving down the field for a half-ending field goal that would give them a seven-point lead at the break.
IT’S DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN
Robert Carter Jr. is COLDDDD! 🧊#cfl pic.twitter.com/P070ApdHuS
— CFL (@CFL) July 28, 2025
Carter Jr.’s done this before.
“The first one wasn’t luck,” he is heard to exclaim, on the BC sideline, moments after the play. “To do it twice?”
Just last August, while he was playing for Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh, Carter Jr. made a similar play against Utah State, only better, he told the media after Sunday night’s game. On that one, he used his right hand instead of his left and was spinning in the air when he made a backhander that caused a social media tsunami.
It was overwhelming, he says.
This time, Carter Jr. was ready for the media onslaught that would follow his BC Place heroics.
“It was really like a replay,” he says. “Because at halftime with the one that happened in college, my dad had texted me. It was like, ‘oh, you’re gonna blow up.’ (Sunday), the exact same thing happened.”
This might actually have been the third time he’d gone viral for a one-hander, he figures, if only an earlier stunner had better visuals.
When Carter Jr. was in high school, he says, he pulled a similar rabbit out of the hat, but this time it was in a crowd of players who obscured the view.
“I have a small video clip of it,” he says. “But it’s not, like, clear as day so it didn’t really get much hype.”
I’d say he’s more than made up for that, though.