Coming soon to a playing field near you is a trick play so clever it’s likely to be imitated on punt returns throughout the land. Green Bay quarterback Aaron Rodgers, speaking for the team that got duped, called it “the most incredible play I’ve ever seen,” a convincing pantomime that left people “wondering what the heck just happened.” His teammate Greg Jennings thought it was “the best play I’ve ever seen.”
With just over a minute left in the Packers 27-17 beat-down of the Bears, Green Bay punter Tim Masthay got off a towering kick meant to pin Chicago deep in its territory. The ball was heading left but return man Devin Hester pretended it was going right, staring into the sky at a pretend pigskin and moving into place behind a wall of play-acting teammates. Ten of the Packers, looking at Hester rather than the ball, ran toward him like autograph hounds at a Justin Bieber sighting.
Johnny Knox of the Bears had lined up in position to block one of the Green Bay gunners. Just prior to the snap, he raced backward, putting himself in position to catch the kick over his shoulder. The only Packer following the actual arc of the punt was Masthay himself, and he proved no match for Knox, who had two blockers ahead of him to clear the path to the end zone. It appeared to be an 89-yard touchdown, which would have made it a 27-24 game and put the Bears in position to win or tie if they recovered an on-side kick.
Instead Chicago was penalized for holding. Corey Graham, re-signed this year by the Bears for his usually-heady special teams play, had grabbed one of the Packers up field. “It was a bad play by me,” Graham confessed later, pointing out the obvious, that he had committed a foul 30 or 40 yards away from the ball on a player who was soon running in the wrong direction. “I should have let him go, just don’t even touch him.”
The Oscar goes to: Devin Hester. The Razzie to: Corey Graham.
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