NC State "borrows" trick play from Duke

If NC State wide receiver Thayer Thomas’ trick play touchdown pass looked familiar on Thursday night, it might be because the Wolfpack stole the play from Duke.

The wide receiver threw NC State’s only touchdown pass of the game, doubling the Wolfpack’s lead over Syracuse just before halftime. NC State went on to win, 16-10.

Thomas said afterward that the team added the play after watching Duke run it against Virginia Tech two weeks ago.

“We do that all the time,” Thomas said. “We look at plays from other games and try to add it to our arsenal. We saw that was a potentially good play to have, and we looked at it and sort of formatted it the same way and went with it.”

That doesn’t leave much time to practice it.

“I’d say I threw it about four or five times,” Thomas said.

While that doesn’t seem like much time to perfect it, that’s the nature of running borrowed plays.

“Yeah, that’s usually what we do,” he said. “We have four or five plays we introduce the week of the game. We rep it in practice to see if it’s gonna work. We always have our base DNA plays, but we try to look at other things too.”

There was also another layer of intrigue surrounding the stolen play, as Thomas explained.

“My high school quarterback is a backup for Duke—Gunnar Holmberg,” Thomas said. Thomas graduated from Heritage in Wake Forest, NC in 2017, Holmberg a year later. “He showed me the play. I didn’t tell the coaches about it, but they were showing install for the game, and I was like, ‘Dang, that’s what my friend said we should run with me,’ and we ended up doing it.”

Here’s the original play as run by Duke.

Jalon Calhoun goes back to his QB days and tosses it to a wide open Deon Jackson! 🏈#DukeGang #MustSeeACC | @DukeFOOTBALL @primetimejalon_ @deon_jackson4 pic.twitter.com/67Ci8MpeR5
— ACC Digital Network (@theACCDN) September 28, 2019

And here’s the copy, run by Thomas, 13 days (and less than a half dozen practice reps) later.

Sometimes you gotta go deep into the playbook for a score 📋 pic.twitter.com/iM0yBY59SN
— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) October 11, 2019

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