Watch Western Michigan Win With A Fake Spike Play
Western Michigan delivered one of the most memorable moments of the shortened MAC Football season Wednesday night.
WMU hosted Toledo Wednesday night in a matchup featuring two of the top teams in the MAC. The game did not disappoint, but it looked like Western would end up falling just short in the end. With under one minute to play the Bronco's trailed Toledo by ten points, and that's when some magic started to happen.
WMU would score a touchdown with less than a minute left on the clock, but missed the extra point. That meant they would need to recover an onside kick, and score another touch down for the win. The onside kick normally never works, but WMU pulled it off.
The Bronco's had some life left, and you could tell they were optimistic about pulling off the miracle. I mean, just look at their twitter account during the game.
The Bronco's completed a pass and had 19 seconds to score the game winning touchdown.
If you are a casual football fan, I'll take a minute to explain what is about to happen. Every time there is an incomplete pass, the game clock stops until the ball is snapped again. Normally, when a team is out of timeouts, they will spike the ball to stop the clock. This gives them time to set up a last play that they feel good about.
The defense knows that this is pretty standard practice, but about once a season, a team fakes the spike and catches the defense off guard. The first time I can remember seeing this was by Dan Marino, who just happened to be my favorite player at the time. You can watch the Marino fake spike here. A little Flint connection on that iconic play since Mark Ingram Sr. was the man that caught the ball. He's obviously Mark Ingram Jr's dad.
The Bronco's caught Toledo off guard and the fake spike play worked to perfection.