If you like trick plays, this might be the Super Bowl for you

PHOENIX – Jon Ryan started working on being a punter at 7 years old. He became really good at it too.

Ryan is good enough that he is the punter for the defending Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks. He has been one of the better punters in the NFL for his nine seasons.

And now he’s known mostly for the one pass he has attempted in his pro career.

Ryan threw a 19-yard fake field goal touchdown to offensive lineman Garry Gilliam in Seattle’s NFC championship game win. A television station from Seattle excitedly approached him this week, and most of the questions weren’t about his punting technique.

“It’s so funny,” Ryan said. “For 26 years of my life I’ve been punting footballs and working my butt off to become a good punter. Now all I’m known for is throwing a football. At the same time, it’s a lot of fun.”

We love trick plays. Give us a hook-and-ladder or flea flicker or Statue of Liberty play and we’re set. When you think of Boise State, you probably first think of either blue turf or the myriad of trick plays they used to win the Fiesta Bowl in 2007.

We might be in luck this Super Bowl. The Patriots scored on a wide receiver pass in the divisional round and threw a touchdown to an offensive tackle in the conference championship game. Ryan’s pass against Green Bay will live in Seahawks lore long after he is done punting. Both Super Bowl coaches aren’t afraid to try something from the back pages of the playbook if they see an opportunity. Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said he has alerted his players to beware of any tricks.

“We’re striving to stay ahead of that the best we can in the preparation and the awareness,” Carroll said. “Not all teams are like that, so this team really does heighten your awareness in the different things that they can do.”

The Patriots will get very creative at times, like they did against the Baltimore Ravens. They were so tricky, the NFL had to come up with a new signal to adjust to it. The Patriots used four offensive linemen on some plays against the Ravens and had a fifth player like running back Shane Vereen declared ineligible. It was totally within the rules and, honestly, pretty brilliant.

A week later the officials missed what should have been a penalty on offensive tackle Nate Solder’s touchdown catch against the Colts – offensive lineman Cameron Fleming declared as eligible receiver, stayed on the field the next play for Solder’s touchdown but was ineligible, and that’s illegal. He needed to come off the field for one play before going from eligible to ineligible. Carroll said he asked the league about the situation and they’ve come up with a signal to avoid mistakes and confusion.

“They’re going to have a new signal that designates when a player with an ineligible number will be eligible - that’s the same,” Carroll said. “But, when an eligible number is now ineligible, they’re going to make a new declaration to the players on the field so that you’ll clearly identify that. I know the league is absolutely committed to getting that right and doing that well.”

With these coaches, they’re sure to have some other gadget play ready to throw off the opposing defense. But they’ll be smart if they call one.

“Charlie Brown” was the name of the Seahawks’ fake field goal. As in, Ryan pulls out the football like Lucy in the cartoon (pretty clever). But they were only going to run that play if they got a specific look, if Packers linebacker Brad Jones was on the field on the left side of Seattle’s formation. The Seahawks saw in film study that he came down hard on field-goal blocks, so that side of the field might be open for a touchdown pass.

The players involved in that play had to get used to doing things out of their comfort zone with almost no practice time. There’s not a lot of time for the field-goal unit to practice at all during the week, much less to spend time on a fake that might not come to pass. They practiced it four or five times, from Ryan’s recollection. Ryan said the biggest part nobody thinks about is just communicating it so everyone knows the fake is on. Only about three or four players know the fake is on, and it was called before they went on the field. If they didn’t get the look they want on the field, Ryan would call it off when he got into place as the holder.

Once they had the look they wanted and everyone who had to know was aware the fake was on, they just had to keep their wits and do their job.

“When I saw the look I was just excited,” Ryan said. “You don’t have time to think about being nervous or being scared. Everything went our way on that one.”

There's one underrated factor about trick plays. There has to be a lot of trust in the players to get it right without much practice. On the Julian Edelman-to-Danny Amendola receiver-to-receiver touchdown pass against the Ravens, Edelman had to make sure he was behind Tom Brady so Brady’s toss to him was a backward lateral. Amendola had to sell the run fake long enough to get past the safety.

On Solder’s play, he had to know where to be and also execute. It's not so easy, with the pressure of a conference championship game for a lineman who had never made an NFL reception. But the Patriots and Seahawks trust their players to make those types of plays that we all love so much.

“They always keep things simple for each individual player,” Solder said about the various gadget plays. “I don’t think anything we do is easy, there are challenges even if you’re just lining up simple formations, there are a lot of complicated things that come up. So when you mix and match, you have to be light on your feet and adjust.”

- - - - - - -

Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdowncorner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab

from Yahoo Sports http://ift.tt/1zaynqJ