The most common explanation for why Washington can beat Alabama in the Peach Bowl semifinal on New Year’s Eve: “Well, you never know what happens when you give Chris Petersen a month to plan.”
Bama has to prep for Chris Petersen’s trick plays, whether he runs any or not
His teams don’t use as many as you might think, but he’s fine with opponents spending time on them anyway.
Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images
The kernel of truth in that notion is simple. Petersen has won a lot of games and, at Boise State, famously beat bigger teams in season openers and bowls.
That preparation translates in a few ways, but the thing that comes to mind for most people is those trick plays Petersen’s Broncos used against Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl and in a few other big games.
Because Nick Saban is likewise meticulous in his preparation, this tweet contains another kernel of truth:
No, I don’t think Saban is “scared.” I do think he has a ton of time and a ton of assistants. If he overlooked a detail, then he wouldn’t be Saban.
A few days ago, Petersen said he thinks teams spend too much time preparing for his trick plays. That doesn’t mean he isn’t in favor of opponents using practice time on a myth.
“I hesitate to even get into the strategy behind it, but I will talk about it a little bit because I think it’s so funny because people don’t get it. And I don’t want people to get it,” Petersen said. “When we were at Boise and became like Trick Play University because of the Fiesta Bowl when we ran three that we kind of had to against Oklahoma to make them work, so it was on this big stage. But if you look back at that season, we probably ran one or less than one a game.
“So we’re talking about, how many plays, like 900 plays during a season and we might run less than 20, maybe 15 deceptive-type plays. But yet everybody’s like, ‘That’s all they do is run trick plays.’”
Petersen said Colorado’s defensive coordinator approached him in frustration because CU repped so many trick plays in practice, but the Huskies never ran any in their game.
Let’s go back to the start of the Petersen trick play mythos.
The 2007 Fiesta Bowl was the preeminent giant-slaying of our time, which put Boise State (and Petersen) on the map as bona fide. Thanks in part to those three trick plays, the Broncos vanquished Oklahoma.
In the building of the myth, we forget the context and focus just on the overtime Statue of Liberty play. The Broncos led this thing for over 50 minutes. They scored first and led by as many as 18 into the third quarter. The game rubber-banded back to the heavyweight once Oklahoma stopped giving Boise the ball.
On fourth-and-18 with 18 seconds left, they hit the famous Circus play.
The folks at FootballXOs.com diagrammed it.
Adrian Peterson scored on the first play of overtime to put the Sooners ahead again.
On their first play, the Broncos ran a different RB pass play, which you probably forgot about because it didn’t work.
Thankfully for the narrative, this one did a few plays later.
The beauty of a trick play comes in its timing or its setup. This one had more of the latter.
In this video, Bryan Harsin, then the offensive coordinator and now Boise State’s head coach, talks about the wildcat pass. The Broncos didn’t have to score here, because it was fourth-and-2, not fourth-and-goal. Because of that, Harsin copped to the fact that the trick play wasn’t as risky as you might think.
“We had run the ball off of that set against Nevada, and I just felt like all through practices up to that game that they would have watched that play, Nevada. It’s so — you know what’s coming. The quarterback motions out, Vinny [Perretta]’s in the backfield, I mean they gotta be thinking ‘run.’ Really felt strong about Vinny. If he didn’t have the throw — and he’s done this for us a couple times, and we even tried a throwback earlier in the series — if we didn’t have it that he would find us a way to get those 2 yards. Everything about what he did in that play, all the little coaching points he did, a little extra tuck, I mean just really selling it.”
When you go back to the game broadcast (at 2:46:37), Boise State even faked out the guys calling the game. One of the guys mutters under his breath, “They’re gonna run it.” They didn’t. Harsin was right.
Boise was counting on Oklahoma to have studied the Broncos. The Sooners would have seen the same formation with the same look earlier in the season with no pass attached.
The Fiesta Bowl key is the tight end, Derek Schouman, bluffing a block and sneaking out to the second level for the pass. Against Nevada, he cut blocked. Against Oklahoma, he didn’t.
After the Broncos scored that TD, you know the rest. The Statue of Liberty play helped rocket this game into the sport’s eternal lore.
Again, it was the setup that gets lost. This is a bubble screen with the statue play on the backside. Wide receiver Drisan James admitted how bad the screen fake was. They were too preoccupied with Ian Johnson’s heroics, just like the rest of us.
Harsin would keep the tradition alive by using the Statue of Liberty play in multiple Boise State games.
Since then, Petersen has been known as “the trick play guy,” whether he likes it or not.
In the 2010 Fiesta Bowl, Petersen and Boise State faced TCU. In a tie game on fourth down, the Broncos extended a drive with a fake punt.
They would score the go-ahead TD on that drive and win 17-10.
Washington’s 2015 win over USC was a breakthrough of sorts, despite how down the Trojans have been. The Huskies won with a trick play.
Petersen ran the same play a few years earlier, while he was with Boise State, against Washington in a bowl. But after the USC game, Petersen was ready to put the stiff-arm on the Trick Play U talk yet again.
“You know how I feel about that — it’s one trick play a game and it happened once and now we’re Trick Play University again,” he said.
“There’s too many other hard-nosed run plays that those kids deserve to feel good about.”
Petersen knows perception is reality.
There is a reason he toes this party line, and the crux of it is in the end of that statement. When you become Trick Play U, you get written off and people lose respect for your program and you as a coach — as if you’re not good on your own merits and need trick plays to win. Petersen wants to remind you that his players can line up against anybody, but he’s also fine with opposing coaches thinking otherwise.
What got Petersen to the Playoff isn’t the Statue of Liberty or the halfback pass. It’s a slobberknocking style similar to the one Alabama makes its bones on, albeit with plenty of creative wrinkles.
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