How to disguise your quarterback as your punter

One of the best trick plays we've ever seen is one of the simplest.

Football is a game of deception: Defenders tricking passers into thinking they’re playing one coverage, then swapping into another; quarterbacks using sleight-of-hand to sell play-action before throwing the ball. For decades, teams have sought any possible way to confuse the opposition, even bending and breaking the sport’s rules in hopes of gaining an advantage.

But in their bowl game, Bowling Green innovated with a so-simple-why-didn’t-we-think-of-it form of football trickeration. They didn’t exploit an obscure loophole, or create a nifty play design that fooled the opposition. No, this was much dumber and better.

The Falcons successfully dressed one of their players up as another one of their players—less trick play, more trick-or-treat. I’m calling it Mrs. Puntfire.

(And yes, I do realize I am publishing back to back newsletter entries about weird special teams things.)

Here’s the play that fooled the opponents (and announcers.)

At the start, there’s no evidence that anything is abnormal. The Falcons are in a standard punt formation with what appears to be their standard punt personnel. Because it’s 4th-and-20, Arkansas State had no reason to anticipate a fake. Then the “punter” throws an absolute bomb, a perfect spiral that hits receiver Malcolm Johnson Jr. in stride 40 yards downfield:

The trick is the punter wasn’t a punter. The usual punter, John Henderson, wears #19. It’s somewhere-down-the-depth chart quarterback¹ Baron May, wearing #18. 18 pretty much looks like 19, especially on a football uniform with block numbering.

Put yourself in the mind of an Arkansas State special teams player. You have no deep knowledge of Bowling Green’s roster. In fact, you’d never heard of “Bowling Green” until three-ish weeks ago. Your coach has tried to drill into your head a list of things to look for, none of which are related to Bowling Green’s bench quarterbacks who have not played all season. You see one of these two guys out of the corner of your eye, and have about 3.5 seconds to determine whether one of them is a different guy.

Did you pass the test? Or did you just give up a 40-yard touchdown pass?

The whole trick here: Quarterbacks and punters look kinda alike.

There’s a history of overlap between QBs and punters². They’re some of the only players on the field whose bodies aren’t optimized for speed or strength. They tend towards tall and skinny… and white, which I’m mentioning not to get into the fraught racial history of which athletes get to play what football positions, but because we’re specifically looking for lookalikes. Bowling Green could not have pulled this off with their actual backup QB, Lucien Anderson III.

Here’s May, a transfer from East Tennessee State. He’s listed at 6-foot, 195 pounds.

Here’s the regular punter, John Henderson. He’s listed at 6-foot-1, 180 pounds.

Do they look that much alike? No! One has a beard! But BGSU did some work to mask their differences.

The key to success? THE ART OF DISGUISE!

Bowling Green clearly attempted to dress May up like Henderson, changing his uniform number and accessories. Here’s Henderson on the first punt of the game.

As you can see, he’s the only player on the field wearing high socks. This is pretty common for punters—it keeps their calves and hamstrings warm and ready to boot the ball. He’s also warming his hands to catch the snap by holding them against his rear thigh-butt region. (Technical term.)

As a quarterback, that’s not really May’s look. This was May’s first snap at Bowling Green, so I can’t go back and find tape of his normal gameday get-up. But here he is at East Tennessee. He’s wearing high-ish socks, but not knee-high punter gear.

But when it was fake punt time? May was all socked up. He’s also holding his hands in his thigh-butt region—possibly to hide his non-canon wristbands, possibly to mimic Henderson’s hand-warming pose.

Bowling Green also switched May’s uniform number. On their website, May is listed as #8. But he came onto the field wearing #18, which blends in pretty well with Henderson’s #19. It’s legal to change a player’s uniform number mid-season—all that matters is the roster submitted to the officials on gameday³. Arkansas State’s coaching staff would have had the chance to look at the gameday roster and should have cross-referenced that roster with the team’s usual roster to ID any changes… but what are the odds they would pick up on the backup QB changing from #8 to #18, and that they would communicate that change to the relevant special teams players and coaches? Pretty low!

And when the team came out onto the field, they hung around in a loose huddle until shortly before the snap, giving the defense even less time to identify the switcheroo. You can see May at the 50-yard line here, ejecting from the back of the huddle as late as possible so the opposing team gets relatively little time to look at him.

I suspect this also kept Arkansas State from noticing that Johnson, the team’s leading wide receiver, was in on the punt team—watching their other punts in this game, that’s not normal.

They got all the details right.

Obviously, nobody on Arkansas State’s special teams unit noticed. Neither did the announcers, who went on an extended back-and-forth about how the punter probably should play quarterback. Then, during the commercial break, they were informed it actually was a quarterback, and they issued a correction. Even the Youtube video embedded at the top of the page still identifies Henderson as the passer.

I really think Bowling Green picked the perfect time and place to run this trick. As noted by Pat McAfee—a pretty divisive sports media individual, but you’ve gotta admit, probably the one most qualified to break down situational punt analysis—Bowling Green chose to run the play in a situation where the punt coverage unit was anticipating a relatively high, short kick. In these situations, the coverage players are coached to bail instead of closely tracking their man for the entire punt, since a return is unlikely and their presence does little but create chaos. That left Johnson wide open.

It was in a bowl game, the ideal time for “F*** it, run that play we’ve been saving all season” trickery. (There have been a lot of good ones so far this bowl season—this is my favorite.)

And you could only run this play in college. NFL teams have two quarterbacks on the gameday roster⁴ and they’re much more recognizable. If the Chiefs tried this, for example, the opposing team would pretty quickly be like “hey wait a sec isn’t that Carson Wentz” and the whole thing would be busted. (The league also prevents players changing numbers mid-season.)

Oh, by the way, Bowling Green lost. To be honest, they kinda lost because of bad punting. Their first punt was returned for a TD, and later in the game, Henderson seemingly went rogue on a punt and tried running for a first down. So it wasn’t the best night for Bowling Green’s special teams staff and players.

Doesn’t matter! They came up with a strategy so pure that I’m going to be looking at every punter for the rest of time with a magnifying glass to make sure they aren’t a secret QB. And that legacy is way more beautiful than winning a single bowl game.

1. The broadcast announced May as the third-stringer, but Bowling Green’s pregame depth chart listed two other quarterbacks, Lucien Anderson III and Camden Orth, as backups to starter Connor Bazelak. But Orth is in the transfer portal and may not have been with the team at the bowl game. Let’s call him three-and-a-halfth string.

2. I initially wrote like 300 words about QB-punter crossover stars like Norm Van Brocklin, Tom Tupa, and Randall Cunningham, but then remembered I’m trying to keep these newsletters shorter.

3. If May had entered the game wearing a number besides the one listed on the gameday roster, it would have had to be reported to the official and announced before the play, which could have ruined the surprise. Funnily enough, I blogged about this earlier this year. There are also rules against playing two players at the same position with the same number, which explains why they didn’t just switch May to #19—it would’ve prevented them from using their punter for the rest of the game.

4. They can play a third QB if the first two get injured but the other two can’t return to the game, so you couldn’t use a third QB on a fake punt.