Western Kentucky Just Submitted a Solid Candidate for Worst Fake Punt of the Year
The 87-yard fumble from the Louisiana Tech-Mississippi State game that resulted in a third-and-93 has held pole position in the race for Worst Play of 2017 for more than two months. It took a while, but we finally have a worthy competitor.
Check out this fake punt (?) from Western Kentucky-Florida International.
The play starts with an absolutely perfect snap, which we must acknowledge because I don't want to lump the long snapper in with the rest of this garbage play. Anyways, it went south from there, though it's not really clear what the play design was. The punter never looked like he was going to punt the ball, but the coverage team was also jetting down the field as normal.
Once it's clear that the play—whatever the play was—is broken, the punter decides to make his man miss instead of getting off a kick and limiting the damage. He avoids the tackle but trips a little on his own feet, setting himself up for a drawn-out falling process that just made everything worse.
No disaster play is complete without the other team picking it up and returning for the touchdown. Which, of course, FIU did.
So was it a fake? Did the punter black out and just forget how to kick a football? The world may never know.
