Cardinals Film Room: Fake Punt Trickery

Big Red

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Mar 16, 2019
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Cooper fights off pass interference to make the catch: “He tugged me on my right side a little bit, but it wasn’t enough where I couldn’t concentrate, react to the ball and still make the catch. Maybe if he would have gotten the left side of me, but I came back just enough to get in front of him.”


Lee sees the flag: “At first I was like, ‘Aw, crap, we’re going to get offensive pass interference.’ You just never know. When it was defense, I was like, ‘OK, we’re good.’”


Turner marvels at the play design: “We ran a fake last year, but that wasn’t as clever as this. We practiced it and it’s like, ‘This is a nice little play. It’s got some moving parts.’ And then seeing it in the game actually work, it was actually a better-designed play than I thought.”


Lee knows it was a huge risk: “Rodgers and Kingsbury – I know it was Rodgers’ call, but I don’t know how the discussion went – it was a pretty ballsy call. I’m glad we were able to make it work out. I think it was an awesome play. When we drew it up, I was like, ‘Is it too gimmicky?’ But we ran it in practice and it was smooth and looked pretty good. They actually played it pretty well, and it still worked. If they would have been confused at all, he would have been wide open. I think it just goes to show it was a good play call, because they played it pretty well and we still got it.”


Cooper had never seen a fake punt so creative: “This was a whole flea (flicker), trick play, double reverse pass back. Jeff came up to me and he’s like, ‘We’ve got a trick play where we’re going to do (all of that) and you’re going to wheel out and I’m going to have Andy throw it. When he said it, I said, ‘Andy Isabella? How is this going to work?’ Andy’s one of our gunners, so I was like, ‘Andy Isabella? That’s going to work? Can he throw?’ He’s like, ‘Nah, Andy Lee.’ I’m like, ‘Ohhh, OK. That makes sense.’ I’d never seen Andy throw before but if Jeff trusted him, I knew it was fine. And it worked out how it was drawn up.”

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