Georgia’s kicker used his soccer skills to PUMP FAKE a would-be block

Take a look at this beauty from Georgia kicker Rodrigo Blankenship. Your eyes do not deceive you, this is a pump fake extra point.

Tennessee had good penetration here, and it looked like there was a decent chance to block it, so Blankenship’s pump fake here was pretty heady play.

The second half of the kick isn’t strictly speaking unprecedented. The no-step kick is a tactic that kickers of Blankenship’s skill level can pull off as a drill.

And Blankenship has plenty of power in his lower body.

But this is still absolutely bonkers.

The stutter step is a soccer strategy, and a tactic of deception by penalty kick takers on the pitch to gain an advantage over the keeper.

Blankenship has a soccer background, even wearing a brand of discontinued Nike soccer cleats on the football field.

“I was almost always playing at least a year up [in youth club soccer], maybe two years up, and that got me really well equipped for high school. I dressed for a couple of games as a freshman and when I got over to Sprayberry I started as soon as I got there, as a sophomore,” Blankenship told the team website earlier this season. “Our teams weren’t so hot when I was at Sprayberry, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.”

But the wildest thing about Blankenship’s field goal is how long it took. Integral to any kick or punt is the operation time. For a PAT or a field goal it’s usually about 1.3 seconds from the snap through the kick.

“Certainly if they have good timing — they have a good operation it is very, very difficult to block a field goal,” Cincinnati’s special teams coach Brian Mason told SB Nation in an interview this week. “That’s one of the more difficult things to do.”

Blankenship made it happen anyway.