Pat McAfee Breaks Down His Favorite Trick Plays From NFL's Week 5 Games | Pat McAfee Reacts

We have two quarterbacks on the field at the same time. The amount of trickery. And if you watch football, if you watch football this past weekend, I mean, the trickery was on display all over the place. Trickery has become normal football. If you go down to Atlanta, they had Drake London on an end-around, shaking people, okay? Here, what are we doing, reverse. Is he running it? No. Shaking a guy, throwing the ball. How you doing? John Duesmith, first down. Artie Smith calls that as just a play that was needed, a play that would happen. Back in the day, oh, this is risky, this is risky. This is standard operating procedure in the NFL now. You need to know he's a lefty going into the week. Drake London can roll to his left and sling that thing. Who's a righty? We'll find out next week. It's real. How about the Detroit Lions? We talked about this with the brotherly shove. We said there's going to come a time where Jalen Hurts is going to be up under center, and Jason Kelsey is going to snap it right through Jalen Hurts' legs, right to a running back, and he's going to pop off the other side. The Detroit Lions said, we are snapping it to David Montgomery, and he's going to go pick up the first down. The rear-end view is obviously the one that we want to see here. Pause that. Right through Jared Goff's legs, right to the running back, and then Ragnow and the boys have easy pick-up blocks, and although it almost gets stopped early, Montgomery's able to pop through for a first down. Not a touchdown, so it's not going to show up on a lot of highlights, but this type of situation is hysterical. That is just normal football in 2023. What's that? A guy bent over, snapping it through somebody's legs to somebody else seven yards behind him, and then they're going to pick it up, and the Detroit Lions were not done there. You know, hey, what's the play du jour? That's play of the day. Okay? And I don't know how many people ordered this particular play du jour, but I do know that it was available for all parties. The Detroit Lions started this entire thing. We got a pitch, reverse, flea flicker that ends up a touchdown for La Porta in Iowa. What a play. The Panthers' defense minds are absolutely blown. We just saw a ball get snapped through a guy's legs. Now we got a pitch, reverse, flea flicker, touchdown in our face. I don't know if Frank Reich was thinking on a sideline or if he was ever thinking on a sideline at this stage of the game, but when Ben Johnson gets cooking, it's a thing of beauty. I talked to George Kittle earlier. He said, we've had that play in since week eight, coach. How come I'm watching another tight end score on a play that's been designed for me? He said, don't worry about it. We'll back it up three yards. Same exact play. Order the play du jour flow, reverse, flea flicker, purdy, Kittle, touchdown, Niners. I love that this is what the NFL has become. There's creativity, there's explosive plays, and there's guys that can handle it mentally and physically to give us the most electrifying style of football that we've had in some time. I love it, AJ. I like the trickery kind of being expected at this stage of the game. I like that it's becoming somewhat commonplace for offenses to do this, and it's not crazy. What's the most they used to do? Maybe run a little flea flicker. Back gets the ball. He runs up to the line, turns around, pitches it back, and we throw it deep. That's normally what we see. Now we're getting different variations, double reverse passes, and I'm sure these coaches also at the same time have like, whenever they do think up these creative plays or whenever they install them, they have a lot of fun doing it as well, and the defense just gives them another thing that the coach is going to have to walk through. Hey, if they run this play, we have to go through our responsibilities for each individual position, and all of a sudden you get in the game and someone drops a coverage and they score a touchdown. You're like, oh, cool. Glad we spent six hours on this. Yeah, I'm happy we wasted valuable practice time and meeting time when we could have been talking about, I don't know, third and short, actual red zone defense that's going to take place. I think the mental warfare with these tricks is also a massive piece of it. I think Bill Belichick used to do it all the time. All the time. You know, all their wide receivers could throw, they were going to throw, Tom Brady's going to catch most of the time. Yeah, most of the time. Except for that one time. Mm-hmm, in the Super Bowl. That we have to bring up. I don't like it. Yeah. Because he has a lot of other completions that take place, but Andy Reid is all in on them. Oh, yeah. Those guys are being talked about as the two best coaches of the modern era. They're obviously doing it. Why not others? I'm happy to hear they're following suit because D-Butt, you guys got so many different things happening right in your face, you can't keep up. It's almost a guaranteed touchdown if executed right. Although, we have seen some of these trick plays backfire grotesquely, and I think every coach thinks they're going to get fired that moment. And that's when everybody points to the OSD and say, you idiot. But I mean, like AJ said, this is something you think about. You got to, something extra you got to think about throughout the week. All right, who's left-handed? Who played quarterback in high school? I remember Jarvis Landry was a guy who would throw the ball. He was a lefty. Yep. And another thing with these, some of these teams have tendencies. I know for sure the Lions, they got, if it's sudden change and they're anywhere around that logo, the one we played earlier with LaPorta against the Falcons, I believe. They have some tendencies. That was the PN10. So the first play of the drive for the 49ers as well. So once again, something else those defensive coordinators and players got to be aware of when it comes to reading their keys with these offenses. Vrabel had some sweet stuff. The game that we watched, there was a lot of high football IQ being on display. And at one point, third and short, they moved Dehop into running back. Dehop is a running back. So now the linebacker has to pick up Dehop. And then he just squirted out of the backfield, shakes the linebacker, and it's a first down like easy. I'm like, wow. That's like a coach setting up a successful play. You know, like some of these teams, we see offenses that can't do anything. It's like, well, some of these other places we're watching them like, oh, we're actually going to make this play be successful. Dehop went for over a hundred, by the way. He was, Tannehill was slinging at them. I mean, it was fun to watch. The Colts, though, on the flips, I think they had Derrick Henry throw a ball yesterday against us. Just standard operating procedure. What are you, 6'4", 270? Yeah, you run over everybody. Yeah, also need you to have some touch with the throw. Not just down by the end zone. Need you to do it. Shane Steichen, our guy, if it's fourth and less than five, fucker, he's in play. Every single time. If it's in an area, too, where the worst that can happen is a five-yard penalty, whether it's a field goal, we can lose five yards, or a punt, we can lose five yards. He is sending, fourth and three, he's sending team out, hard count every time, trying to steal it. And I assume that's a setup for at some point, they're going to actually go for it. But whenever the teams don't fall for it, there's always like a zoom in on Shane. He's like, meh, try, meh, I tried, you know, like I tried to steal it. They were actually booing, like some Colts fans were booing him at some points for this little, what he was doing. They're like, want him to actually go for it? It's like at some point he will. Like, this is Shane's thing, though. Like, he sent the punt team out there one time, a couple weeks ago against the Ravens, then punt team off the field, then quarterback back on the field, and tried to catch hard ball in a situation, use the timeout, and Shane was like, meh, all right, yep, got him. You know what I mean? Like, he's, I appreciate the way he thinks, like trying to take advantage of shit, because delay a game, who gives a fuck? Right. Whatever. We don't, it's going to be a 22-yard field goal, or a 27-yard field goal, who cares? We're going to be punting from the plus 40 or the plus 45, like for Rigoberto Sanchez, does not matter. So, I appreciate that this is like the next stage, feelingly, of football IQ and football decision-making, AJ. Yes, you've got to find a way to get that little edge, and Belichick's been great at that over the years of finding out different ways, like little things, like you say, Stuyken sending the punt team out and then sending them back, and you get them to burn a timeout. All those little things that most people probably wouldn't even notice that much, like those absolutely will come in handy as the year goes, and you're right. They will go for it eventually on fourth and three or whatever, and hopefully it's a big moment and they get it, and then he's like, all right, that's what all this is for. I'm just thinking of the other coach being like, all right, any time it's fourth and less than, let's just get, we don't know. We don't know what this guy's going to do. All of it has amounted to nothing. Every single time, he has done nothing, but at any point, he could do something, and it's like that's just added into the work week, just more shit to think about, more shit to do, and as a fan, it's like kind of exciting. Absolutely. That's what we do. There we go. Okay, we're done. All right. I was kind of pissed we were done for. Still cool. Yeah, kind of pissed. Chase did one too. Mahomes kind of had some acting, like he was confused trying to get a play call. He was walking towards the sideline, and they were trying to look and see if the Vikings going to be caught off guard, and they would have probably snapped it to one of the backs, but they didn't. But you got to try. I like it, because now it's trickery with reading, like what are we, it's like another level of stuff, so I don't know if all Indianapolis Colts fans recognize this with Shane Steichen, but like he is the, he's in the gamesmanship, which I, I am a massive fan of. I am a big, big fan of like, well, I fucking tried. Yeah. I appreciate that. Well, and it keeps you on your toes. We always talk about like something that the other team has prepare for now, and that is absolutely one of them, but the KC one that Debo was talking about, Mahomes like started walking off the field, and then you saw Pacheco like take a step forward and then kind of look as though he was about to snap it, and then the whole defense was going crazy, and they ended up just taking a delay game, but still, the gamesmanship of it is sweet. Love it. Yeah. Because even the, ah, maybe we'll use it, maybe we won't, but fuck it, let's try it. Like even putting that on tape is something, and now you have to have a coach, though, that is, you know, not only thinking of it, not scared to do it, right, because Shane Steichen could get mocked and ridiculed for doing this, and instead he's like, ah, I don't care, it's kind of my thing.