Extra Points: Tricks Are For Kids

November 19, 2009 | Football, Featured Writers, Lee Pace

By: UNC Athletic Communications

Nov. 19, 2009

by Lee Pace, Extra Points

So football is about blocking and tackling and muscle and speed. It's about sticking your headgear in your opponent's chest and having more steel and heart than he does and nailing his rear end to the turf. Most of the time, anyway.

Sometimes, though, football is about trickery and tomfoolery. It's acting, it's scheming and dreaming. It's taking a rabbit from a hat, making a card vanish in thin air.

Gimmicks and gadgets have been a part of football as long as fingers have sketched plays in the dirt and human minds have spawned practical jokes. The Carlisle Indians ran the "Statue of Liberty play" nearly a century ago, with one back pretending to pass and another player coming behind him and taking the ball off his hand, and "Old 83" was a version of that play favored by coach Fielding Yost at the University of Michigan during the same era. Generations later, Johnny Unitas ran it with the Baltimore Colts and recently Boise State won the 2007 Fiesta Bowl with an impeccable rendition of the play.

"Everyone's eyes get a little bigger in the huddle when a trick play is called," says Tar Heel tackle Kyle Jolly. "You wonder if it's going to work. We definitely have fun with them."

Ideas come from anywhere and everywhere. Tar Heel quarterback Mike Paulus suggested the throwback screen pass to Johnny White that gained 25 yards last week against Miami. Butch Davis was impressed watching cornerback Mywan Jackson, a good offensive player in high school, torment the defense on the scout team and suggested that offensive coordinator John Shoop find a special play for Jackson on offense, ergo Jackson's 12-yard gain on a "shuffle pass" against the Hurricanes. One of the graduate assistant coaches saw Tulsa run a pass off an unbalanced line, and a variation of that play worked for a touchdown by Ed Barham against Florida State. Others come from a coach's past--Shoop's first completion as a high school quarterback in Pittsburgh was a hook-and-ladder that went 80 yards for a touchdown. Unfortunately, a play from the same family of tricks gained only 14 for the Tar Heels against Duke two weeks ago.

"If you ever want to find coach Shoop, go to the offensive staff room, anytime day or night, and he's at his desk and the film is on," says quarterback T.J. Yates. "He's game-planning all day long, looking for something new, cooking something up like a mad scientist. The great thing is, he'll listen to ideas from anyone. The play might not make the final cut, but he'll draw it up, we'll practice it and see if it works."

So far this year, the Tar Heels have used gadgets with success: One of them came against FSU when Yates brought the team to the line of scrimmage, turned to the sideline as if he didn't have the play call, thus distracting the defense, and the ball was quickly snapped directly to Shaun Draughn for a five-yard gain on fourth down. And they've used them to no avail: A neat little idea called "Pole Cat" was unveiled at Virginia Tech, with Zack Pianalto, aligned as the left end, centering the ball to Yates on the left hash with the rest of the offensive line set on the right side. The idea was for Yates to then launch a quick pass to Greg Little, but Virginia Tech smelled a rat from the beginning, and besides, the Tar Heels drew a penalty because their linemen weren't properly set pre-snap.

"We're pretty good in our meeting room," Shoop says. "We'll look at most anything. We have a huge `gadget reel.' We add to it every week. Coach Davis might come in Monday morning and ask if we saw such and such a play that someone ran over the weekend. We'll find it on film somewhere. If you've got an idea, we'll hammer it out.

"Trick plays are good for morale. Kids have fun with them. We always have a whole bunch in the cooker. We might practice six or eight every week, but most of them we'll say, `That's not ready yet, it needs another week of work.'"

One of the most memorable tricks in recent Carolina memory was the "Rooskie" used to spring Willie Parker for a touchdown at Pittsburgh in 2000. The Tar Heels drove inside the Pitt 10 late in the first quarter, and Parker lined up just behind the guard and tackle on the right. QB Ronald Curry took the snap and handed the ball off to Parker between his legs, then continued running right as if we were carrying the ball. Nine teammates flowed to the right as well, blocking for Curry. Parker stood still for two counts, then slipped out the back side for an eight-yard score in the Tar Heels' 20-17 win.

The Tar Heels ran a played called "Sucker" in their 30-24 win over N.C. State in 2004 late in the first half for a touchdown. Coordinator Gary Tranquill installed the play to take advantage of the Wolfpack's speed and aggressive pursuit. QB Darian Durant feigned a screen pass to Jaworski Pollock in left flat, with receivers Jesse Holley and Derrele Mitchell blocking a few yards downfield. When Durant pump faked, State's linebackers and secondary jumped all over it. Holley took off downfield and no one was within 15 yards of him as he reeled in a 23-yard scoring pass.

"It was like throwing chum to the sharks," receivers coach Gunter Brewer said.

Special teams are fertile grounds for gimmicks, and kicker Brian Schmitz was 3-for-3 during his Carolina career from 1996-99 passing the ball on faked punts. One of them came in the Gator Bowl following the 1997 season against Virginia Tech, when Schmitz passed 28 yards to Brian Simmons as the Heels cruised to a 42-3 win.

"All we heard about all week was how great their special teams were, how many punts they had blocked," says Schmitz, living today in his native Chicago. "We thought we could take advantage of their aggressiveness by throwing the ball over them."

That was Carl Torbush's first game as Carolina's head coach after Mack Brown left for Texas, and two years later he was fighting for his job when Carolina was 1-8 traveling to Charlotte to meet N.C. State for a Thursday night ESPN game. So Torbush pulled out all the stops and called another fake punt--the play called "Silver" because the trigger was Torbush touching his silver hair before the punt. Schmitz hit DeFonte Coleman for 11 yards in the third quarter, keeping a drive alive that led to a field goal--three precious points in a 10-6 win.

Schmitz left Carolina disappointed, though, that he was never able to successfully execute a special onside kick he practiced for four years. "Roly Poly" was kind of a "bunt" on a kick-off; the kicker approaches the ball as if he's going to whack it downfield, then slows up at the last instant, lightly thumps the ball and runs alongside as the ball rolls its target distance of 10.5 to 11 yards--whereupon Schmitz falls on it for an onside kick recovery.

"It was a tough kick--it was no good if went eight yards and no good if it went 12," Schmitz says. "I practiced it so much I finally got pretty good at making it take about three hops and then pop up where I could catch it. The worst part was I had to fall on it in practice and got raspberries on my leg. We'd practice it every Thursday, and my leg would be about healed up when it was time to run it again the next week."

"Roly Poly" was finally called by Torbush--Schmitz believes sometime during the 1999 season but his memory fades over the specifics. All he remembers is that the ball was inadvertently touched by one of the Tar Heels next to Schmitz in the kick-off formation.

"All those years practicing it and we never made it work," Schmitz says. "Then I went into the Arena League and must have done it 15 times."

Bobby Rome came to Carolina with a glittering resume as a quarterback--he threw for 4,829 career passing yards, ranking him with Ronald Curry, Michael Vick and Aaron Brooks as the top schoolboy passers from Virginia's Tidewater region. He became a fullback at Carolina but remained proud of the fact he could throw the ball farther than anyone on the team--78 yards shuffling into the throw, 55 yards flat-footed. Rome's prodigious arm strength drew Shoop's attention during a Friday walk-through early in the 2007 season.

"Hey Bobby, come here a minute," Shoop said, a mischievous kernel taking root in his brain.

The offensive staff installed a fullback pass for Rome the week of the Maryland game, rehearsed it for two weeks and then set it up against N.C. State by having Rome carry the ball twice in the first half. On first down from midfield in the third quarter, Rome took a pitch from Yates, feigned a run and then reached back and heaved the ball to Brandon Tate, who was 20 yards clear of the nearest State defender and scored easily.

"I knew he would be open," Rome said. "I had no doubt about that. I just didn't want to over-throw him or under-throw him. I wanted to hit him in stride."

A variation of the play has worked twice since--once at Maryland in 2008 for 44 yards and on the Tar Heels' first drive against Florida State this year for 31 yards.

The Tar Heels have had a productive series of end-arounds run by speedy freshman Jheranie Boyd this year, and the "Jet" package provided a three-yard score against Duke. They ran a similar-looking play last week against Miami, only Yates did not hand the ball to Boyd but instead boot-legged to the right, then threw a screen pass back to the left to White, who is just as fast as Boyd and raced 25 yards down the left sideline.

"We had been running a lot of the `Jet' sweeps and got some good gains against Duke," White says. "We knew Miami would be looking for those and chasing them hard. So we countered their speed by going in one direction and then coming back the other direction."

Another pearl from Carolina's bag of tricks came against Florida State. The Tar Heels had second-and-11 at the Florida State 13 late in the first quarter when they called a special pass play to Barham. They used an unbalanced line, with four players on the line of scrimmage to the right of the center and two players to the left. The end on the left was Barham, but his position one man away from the center made it look as if he were the left tackle--and thus someone the Seminoles wouldn't worry about covering on a pass.

"I was careful coming out of the huddle to kind of bend over and hide my number," Barham said. "I stayed low when I got on the line."

The Seminoles didn't notice that he was No. 80 and was an eligible receiver, so when Yates rolled right, no one covered Barham. He was wide open in the middle of the end zone for a touchdown.

"It happened just like we thought it would," Barham said. "The middle linebacker never looked at me. The only thing that could go wrong then was if I dropped the ball."

One of the best trick plays ever was the "Texas Special" run by Texas A&M against Texas in 1965. Coach Gene Stallings had his quarterback throw the ball to halfback Jim Kauffman, who was lined up as a flanker to the left. The pass was a lateral, as Kauffman was behind the quarterback, but it was "poorly thrown," landing five yards in front of Kauffman. But the ball one-hopped into Kauffman's hands, who immediately feigned disgust at such a poorly thrown pass. With the Texas defense pausing at the thought the play was over with an incomplete ball, Kauffman reared back and threw downfield to Dude McLean, who scored a 91-yard touchdown and gave the Aggies a 17-0 lead at the half.

Longhorns coach Darrell Royal had nothing to say to his players at halftime. He merely wrote in large numerals on the locker room chalkboard, "21-17." Texas scored three times in the second half and won the game, 21-17. The trick in the end that day was on the Aggies.

Lee Pace has written "Extra Points" since 1990 and serves as the sideline reporter for the Tar Heel Sports Network. Email your questions for the pre-game show to asktheheels@gmail.com.