Purdue head coach Jeff Brohm is an aggressive play caller who believes in providing an entertaining brand of football for the fans. One of the ways he accomplishes that is through his use of trick plays.
Those trick plays can come at any time or any place for the Boilers.
Last week, one came with four minutes to play in the first quarter on the road at Illinois.
From the Illini 7-yard line, receiver Terry Wright came in motion and took the hand-off from quarterback David Blough on what looked like a jet sweep. Blough then ran a wheel route in the opposite direction while Wright was pitching the ball to receiver Jared Sparks. Sparks had lined up in the opposite slot, but was now rolling right and firing a touchdown pass to an open Blough in the corner of the end zone.
“Six pack. That’s the name for it,” Brohm said this week. “Sometimes with certain plays you just have one-word names or code names. We’ve actually had that one in for years. As a coach I think we’ve only run it one other time before for success, and then we’ve run something else off of it before for a touchdown. This one, we practiced it, got the look we wanted, and it worked the way it was supposed to work.”
The Ohio State defense will be working on this play, as well as all of the other tricks Brohm has treated his teams’ fans to over the years.
How much time has the defensive staff spent preparing for the kind of gadgets that an engineering school can produce?
“A lot of the time,” Buckeye head coach Urban Meyer said this week. “They’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time on it. And also just the fact that they have an elite player, we’re working really hard on it.”
That elite player is freshman slot receiver Rondale Moore, who can be found in more positions than a yoga instructor.
But it won’t just be Moore that the Buckeyes have to watch out for. “Six Pack,” for instance, didn’t even have Moore involved.
“It’s really hard, especially when they fake block,” OSU junior safety Jordan Fuller said of defending Purdue’s trickery. “But you just have to keep your eyes in the right spot and stay disciplined. Don’t get nosy or anything like that, so that’s what helps.”
Being disciplined has not been a strength of the Ohio State defense, and eye placement hasn’t been great either. They can’t be looking for the trick play, however, because the vast majority of plays will be relatively straight forward.
It’s a difficult position for this OSU defense to be in. They have been scolded for not rallying to the football, but now they’ll have to make sure they don’t rally too quickly.
They have spent more time going over the tricky possibilities this week than any week before, and for good reason.
“We’ve seen them a lot, obviously,” Fuller said of the trick plays. “So yeah, it’s all about just doing your job and keeping your eyes in the right spot. It’s definitely been an emphasis.”