Maryland designed a trick play with an entire decoy offensive line (it didn’t work)

Maryland came out with a fancy formation, but there’s one problem: Nebraska was ready.

The Huskers stayed sound, realizing that with no receiver to the left (that shadow is an official) and only linemen, the ball wasn’t going in that direction.

The Terps faked a sweep to the right, and you can’t really see him, but there’s a receiver at the top of the screen just slightly out of frame. He’s matched up one-on-one with a defensive back, and if the DB bites on the sweep action, Maryland has a home run play possibility. (You can see the quarterback set to throw.)

You can also see Nebraska’s two edge defenders between the hashes alter their alignment slightly as soon as they see the player come in motion. They immediately knew they had contain responsibility if the handoff was indeed coming.

This wasn’t exactly a high-risk deal for Maryland, as it’s near the red zone, but it would have been a decently long field goal attempt.

It’s nowhere near as bad as this, one of the most poorly executed trick plays in America’s heartland — last season, the Indianapolis Colts did whatever the hell this was in a Sunday Night Football game.

But not to be excluded, Nebraska got in on the fun. After scoring a touchdown, the Huskers came out with this extra-point formation.

That fun little setup may be something the team borrowed from early-season opponent Oregon, which routinely runs this type of formation on PATs to get an easy two-point conversion and mess with the math of a game. The Ducks missed on all four attempts though that day, so maybe everyone should just line up and kick the ball.