Unexpected plays can do the trick in playoffs

Football is a game of power and deception. An off-tackle play depends on brute strength, a play-action pass on fooling defenses into thinking run. But that's garden-variety deception — the really fun kind comes more rarely on those much-loved showstoppers known as trick plays.

That's not a reference to the dirty trick of under-inflated footballs; real trick plays are outside the norm but inside the rules.

The Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots earned their way to Super Bowl XLIX with well-timed tricks. The Seahawks faked a field goal on which holder and punter Jon Ryan threw a roll-out touchdown pass to claw back into last weekend's NFC title game against the Green Bay Packers. The Patriots tied their divisional-round playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens a week earlier when a wide receiver threw a touchdown pass after catching a cross-field lateral. The Pats also operated from unorthodox formations in both of their playoff wins.

Might we expect similar subterfuge in Super Bowl XLIX? "I don't know," Patriots quarterback Tom Brady says slyly. "Maybe we have more tricks up our sleeve."

Or maybe not. Such plays work best when expected least. And football coaches are a risk-averse species, which is why trick plays are relatively rare, especially when stakes are highest, as in the Super Bowl. Such plays typically require players to exhibit skills not normally called for at their positions — punters throwing passes, for instance, or left tackles catching them — and that makes coaches skittish.

Perhaps that's why history serves up a relatively short list of trick plays in Super Bowls. Among them are the one the New York Giants used to beat the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXI after the 1986 season and the one the Pittsburgh Steelers used to beat the Seahawks in Super Bowl XL after the 2005 season.

But it can go the other way, too: The Baltimore Colts served up a crucial interception on a trick play gone bad in their upset loss to the New York Jets in Super Bowl III after the 1968 season.

The art of the trick play has a storied tradition, from College Football Hall of Fame coach Robert Zuppke's first flea flicker in 1910 while coaching a high school team to Harpo Marx riding into the end zone on a horse-drawn garbage wagon for a chariot in the climactic scene of 1932's Horse Feathers.

"The art is in the execution," Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels says. That's apt, as Zuppke liked to say, "Art and football are very much alike." Zuppke won national championships at Illinois and is the originator of the term flea flicker, that vivid descriptive for the genre's most exotic trick. Zuppke said he named it for the quick flick of a dog scratching fleas.

"I would imagine that each offense in this league has some number of trick plays, or gadgets or whatever you want to call them, available to them," McDaniels says. "I don't think you go into the season with 25 of them and think you're going to trick everybody every week or anything like that.

"I think you have a few things you think are well thought out that could be used in a specific circumstance, maybe versus an exact specific look you're looking for. Then you try to give the players enough repetition at it in practice to allow them to go out and run it and be successful executing it."

Hines Ward, MVP of Super Bowl XL, was on the receiving end of fellow wide receiver Antwaan Randle El's TD throw. He tells Paste BN Sports the Steelers didn't even think of their trick plays as tricks.

"Everybody else thought it was a trick play," Ward says. "But we worked on the execution."

The same can be said of Seattle's fake field goal, converted for a touchdown when they trailed 16-0 late in the third quarter. The Seahawks knew the Packers' Brad Jones rushed inside on field goal attempts, leaving the edge open. Ryan rolled left and drew in linebacker A.J. Hawk before tossing a TD pass to undrafted rookie tackle Garry Gilliam.

"It was a great call," Ward says. "But I don't really think of it as a trick play. I think of it as they saw something on tape and they executed it."

PATRIOTS' PAYOFF

The Patriots tied the Ravens in the third quarter of their divisional playoff game on a 51-yard TD strike to Danny Amendola thrown by fellow wide receiver Julian Edelman, a former college quarterback who had never thrown a pass in an NFL game. The play was in the Pats' arsenal for 10 weeks before they finally called it, says Edelman, who threw a perfect strike.

"I think the players, we have a great group of guys that, whatever we try to get them to do in practice, they work extremely hard to try to do exactly what we're asking of them and perform the details," McDaniels says. "When it's something that's a little new nuance, some new type of scheme, whatever it may be, they're excited to try to make it go in practice. Obviously the more we work on it, the more confidence we get as we do it, the more eager you are to try it in the game."

The Patriots used trick formations against the Ravens, with ineligible receivers lining up where eligible receivers would normally be, enraging Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who was penalized for coming onto the field to complain. The Pats were up to other formation tricks against the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC title game. Offensive lineman Cameron Fleming reported as eligible double-figure times and did not go out for a pass. And then left tackle Nate Solder reported eligible — and scored his first career touchdown on his first career reception.

"Those plays are, sometimes you have them in for longer periods of time and work on them over and over and just wait for the right opportunity, the right time in a specific game to try to make it go," McDaniels says. "That happened to be the time."

Solder was a tight end in high school and was recruited by Colorado as a 6-7, 230-pound tight end before switching to tackle. Now he's a 6-8, 320-pound tackle.

"We've been practicing that for years," Solder says. "I did it in college. And now here it is."

STEELERS' STUNNER

Toss 39, Reverse Pass.

That's the play on which Randle El took a pitchout from running back Willie Parker before finding Ward for a 43-yard TD in the fourth quarter of the Steelers' Super Bowl win against the Seahawks. Pittsburgh was leading 14-10 with under nine minutes to go when it called the play.

Parker had run 75 yards for a touchdown, and Ward had a reputation for blocking safeties tenaciously on run plays. That was the setup.

"If I didn't have that reputation, the safety isn't really biting," Ward says. "And the cornerback just assumed I was blocking the safety, and by the time he looked for me I was already gone."

Ward recalls his reaction when the play was called. "Antwaan and I looked at each other," he says, "and our eyes got big. And I started smiling because we were going for a big play. ... Antwaan put it right there on the money."

Randle El had been a quarterback in college at Indiana.

"All Antwaan ever wanted to do was to play quarterback in the NFL," Ward says. "He didn't get that chance. And he finally got that opportunity to throw a touchdown in a Super Bowl.

"Anytime we get together, he always says, 'I can't believe that great touchdown pass I threw in the Super Bowl.' "

GALLERY: ONE GREAT PHOTO FROM EACH SUPER BOWL

GIANTS' SURPRISE

Zero Slot Z Motion, Ride 135 Flea Flicker.

That's the play on which Giants running back Joe Morris flipped the ball to quarterback Phil Simms, who hit receiver Phil McConkey for the 44-yard pass that broke open Super Bowl XXI. McConkey can still see it, floating as if in slow motion.

"I remember saying to myself, 'I'm going to catch a touchdown in the Super Bowl,'" he says. "I had dreamed of that moment for my whole life."

Except he didn't score. The Broncos stopped him at the 1-yard line. Morris scored on the next play.

"I was elated and frustrated at the same time," McConkey says. "I knew we'd broken open the game, but I couldn't believe I'd gotten that close and didn't get in."

Not to worry: McConkey, all 157 pounds of him, later caught a 6-yard TD pass that was not drawn up as a trick play but sort of functioned as one anyway, bouncing off the hands of tight end Mark Bavaro first. "Fate shined upon him," Simms says.

The Giants ran a mostly vanilla offense under coach Bill Parcells, McConkey says, relying on their strong defense. New York led 19-10 near the end of the third quarter when the flea flicker poured chocolate sauce on that vanilla.

"I know when we called it I said, 'Oh my God, we're going to win the Super Bowl,'" Simms says. "because I knew if I hit it, it was going to put the score so far out of reach that there was no way we were going to lose it with our defense."

When McConkey closes his eyes he can still see that ball floating, as if time stood still, and remember the delicious anticipation of waiting for it to arrive and wrap his arms around it, like a gift from heaven.

"There was no sound, like a vacuum around you," McConkey says. "There were 100,000 people in the stands and 100 million watching around the world, but it was no different than the ball in the air in (Buffalo's) West Side Little League. The adrenaline rush from a ball in the air, that's the same in any league."

Contributing: Gary Mihoces