Purdue ran the fake kneel-down play that’s becoming a Jeff Brohm staple

Feast your eyes on this beauty of a trick play during Purdue’s 38-35 Foster Farms Bowl win against Arizona on Wednesday. Just when you thought the Boilers were going to kneel on the ball and see the first half out, they busted this out on the Wildcats:

It’s actually a staple of Purdue head coach Jeff Brohm. He used to run the play at Western Kentucky, where he was the coach before coming to Purdue.

It goes beyond just faking the kneel-down, though, incorporating part of a trick play we’ve dubbed “the secret shrimp.”

The concept here is simple. First, you hide a little guy behind a bunch of big guys, and you make the big guys look like they’re still setting pre-snap protection calls. Then you get two guys going the opposite way to distract the defenders and get their eyes and/or their bodies flowing in the wrong direction. And finally, you send the ball carrier the other direction with a small convoy of blockers who are unengaged. It’s similar to a fumblerooski, except the ball itself isn’t the only thing being obscured; an entire ball-carrier is, too.

Brohm’s something of a mastermind with regards to the trick play, but doing it on a kneel-down play is interesting because defenders are switched off and not ready for trickeration. It makes it even more dastardly, but that also created a bit of controversy because of the nature of kneel-down plays. Arizona said as much after the game.

There’s some controversy around plays like this one. The primary criticism of it is that it encourages defensive linemen to play aggressively on kneel-downs, turning non-physical plays into physical plays. Some observers consider it unsportsmanlike when defensive linemen get rough on kneels, but plays like this could make it hard for them not to treat them like any other play. It’s a lot of fun to watch work, however.

Here’s a breakdown of how it works. The basic thing to understand: Brohm runs a pro-style scheme with some extremely college trickery mixed in. His scheme emphasizes vertical routes and is meant to be simple for his own players, with easy reads and straightforward blocking assignments. But it’s meant to confuse the other team, and it often does — with Arizona being the latest to fall for something Purdue pulled.

The Boilers’ win brought their 2017 record to 7-6 in Brohm’s first season. They hadn’t won seven games (or a bowl) since 2011, when they had an identical record and won the Little Caesars Bowl, which no longer exists. In one year, Brohm took by far the most moribund program in the Big Ten and made it both fun and pretty good. That their last game included a weird play that worked so well is fitting.