Many fans are looking at the very unsuccessful trick play the Indianapolis Colts ran on fourth down and asking questions that, frankly, are pretty insulting. Of course the Colts practiced that play. Of course they believed it would lead to a successful conversion. The result wasn’t a good one, but we need to stop saying a designed play is bad merely because it fails once. Instead, let’s analyze what Indianapolis was trying to do and where the execution went wrong.
How the Colts’ trick play went wrong and why it could have worked
It involves a post route, a whale and an Aztec god.
1. Pat McAfee isn’t decoying hard enough.
To sell this play, punter Pat McAfee has to do a bit of acting. He needs to pantomime some practice punts and talk loudly to the lineman snapping the ball, saying something like “HEY I KNOW THIS DIAGONAL SNAP TO ME IS REALLY HARD BUT I BELIEVE IN YOU AND I PROMISE TO KICK THE BALL SO DANG GOOD.” Ideally, when the ball is snapped -- not to him, mind you -- he takes off the shoe on his plant foot and punts that. Make them throw the flag, if that’s even a penalty.
2. These two players should be running deep passing routes.
Though this isn’t a designed pass, you have to keep the defense honest by having one of these players run a fly route along the sideline and the other one run a deep post. New England’s still going to key in on the ball and play the run, but part of their minds will be distracted. What if we’re about to get burned on the most embarrassing deep throw in NFL history? How pissed is coach going to be if we assume this is a run that cannot possibly succeed and then the Colts manage to make this pass? That internal doubt can be the difference between getting stuffed and picking up the first down.
3. Colt Anderson fails to transform into a giant blue whale with wheels right before the ball is snapped.
The most obvious and glaring error. The way this play is drawn up, Colt Anderson is supposed to get under center, check to see if the defense is rushing more than one person at the center and then call on the powers of Opochtli, the Aztec god of fishing, to give him the form of a 380,000-pound motorized whale. Wheel-Whale then takes the snap and bowls over the defense for a first down, terrifying the crowd and television audience and spurring Indianapolis to a win.
Instead, Anderson gets the ball and tries to run through three Patriots as a normal human. Brave, maybe, but not sound from a play calling perspective. Next time, he’ll hopefully trust Opochtli to put him in a position to succeed -- and then execute.
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