Trick play of the week: How Iowa used the rulebook *and* the history book against Minnesota

Look at this firecracker of a play:

Iowa’s daring call on a fourth-and-goal at Minnesota helped the Hawkeyes en route to an uncharacteristic 48 points and a win over the Gophers on Saturday. The play resulted in a 4-yard touchdown run on a direct snap to tight end T.J. Hockenson.

It’s called Herky, named after Iowa’s mascot. Kirk Ferentz told reporters afterward that he needed some persuasion from his assistant coaches to even try it.

“They convinced me,” he said. “It was however many guys on our staff versus one.”

Let’s run through one of the oddest, coolest plays of the year.

A swinging-gate look, with the ball being snapped by someone nowhere near the majority of the Hawkeyes’ offensive linemen. But this formation is even weirder than that:

The Hawkeyes don’t have quarterback Nathan Stanley on the field. They aren’t even in their offense — they start the play in a field goal formation. Their field goal unit is on the field and shifts right before the snap, and because of this, the guys Minnesota has on the field are there to defend against a kick.

The two guys at the back for Iowa there are kicker Miguel Recinos and holder Colten Rastetter. They’re 8 yards behind the line of scrimmage, the typical distance for a kicker and holder. The NCAA considers a formation a “scrimmage kick formation” if a potential holder and kicker are at least 7 yards behind the line and are clearly about to set up a kick.

Being in one also exempts you from a requirement to have five offensive linemen wearing numbers 50-79 on the field, but Iowa doesn’t use that exemption. The Hawkeyes still have their usual five, and they add a defensive tackle (No. 90, Sam Brincks) to the right end of the line to provide blocking help. There are also an H-back and what I’ll call a fullback.

A large part of the idea here is just to be confusing. There’s no discernible reason Iowa would ever kick a field goal out of this look. But when the Hawkeyes sent this unit onto the field, it probably looked like that’s what they’d do, so Minnesota’s personnel grouping wasn’t ideal. Iowa knew what was happening, and Minnesota didn’t.

The Gophers could’ve called a time out here.

It doesn’t go back to the kicker or holder. It’s tossed sort of horizontally to the H-back, tight end Hockenson. That’s a fun little wrinkle!

This is where Iowa’s play harkens back to another era.

In the early 1900s, Pop Warner was helping to popularize the single-wing offense. Some key points of the single wing: an unbalanced line with two more linemen on one side than the other, and a snap going horizontally and backward to a fullback, who figured out something from there. Coaches like Gus Malzahn have since revitalized variations of it:

Iowa isn’t quite in the single wing on this play. Whatever the Hawkeyes are doing is weird. But it bears a lot in common with this old Warner play, which had the FB who received the snap spin to fake like he was handing off to a tailback or wingback, then keep it:

The purpose of the spin move is to keep the defense guessing about which direction the ball’s traveling. The spin creates a natural mesh point for a handoff going to the left, but if the guy who catches the snap keeps the ball, he’s getting a head of steam in the other direction. Plus his back’s turned, so the D can’t even see the ball for a second.

Here’s Robert Neyland’s Tennessee running a variation of it in 1952 against Texas:

And here’s Iowa using the same principle in 2018 against Minnesota: a diagonal snap, a spin move for deception, and the ball-carrier taking off:

The players in these plays — seven decades apart — have different running paths. But the principle’s the same: a diagonal snap and a spin move working together to leave the defense unsure about which way to flow and to create a running lane for someone.

The spin move’s not really in style these days, though it’s made appearances over the years in Paul Johnson’s flexbone option. The main form of QB-RB deception on handoffs is just for the QB to hold the ball in the RB’s belly and then give it to him or pull it back. But spin moves still have some utility. They’re even happening in the NFL in 2018:

The ease with which Iowa scores on the run to the right is directly related to how many people are on the left side of the Hawkeyes’ formation.

The formation clearly confuses the Gophers, who wind up with six defenders standing around near four Hawkeyes on the left side of the field. That gives Iowa a seven-on-five look on the other side, where all of the Hawkeyes’ beef happens to be lined up:

All of the maroon jerseys in that box, obviously, get blocked. Even though the ball-carrier is a freaking Iowa tight end, and even though the defensive tackle the Hawkeyes have blocking for him on the right edge doesn’t hold his block for long, he reaches the pylon without trouble. The layout of bodies on the field gave him too much green grass:

The Hawkeyes use the rulebook to put the Gophers in an uncomfortable position: stuck with a kick-blocking unit out there to stop 11 guys who are actually playing offense. And they draw on a scheme that had its heyday a century ago to take advantage of Minnesota even more.