The Tape Room

Fakes, Decoded

The fake punt is a better-than-coin-flip call that coaches use about nineteen times a season. The fake field goal costs points and is quietly going extinct. And the most efficient touchdown machine in football is a pass thrown by someone who is not a quarterback.

Trick plays are football's smallest data set and its loudest highlight category, which is exactly the combination that breeds bad folklore. The record actually holds 514 fake punts, 201 fake field goals, 757 passes thrown by position players, 736 laterals. Small numbers, but they agree on a few things worth knowing.

The fake punt works. It converts for a first down or touchdown 53.9 percent of the time and averages +0.52 expected points per snap, a better-than-coin-flip call that the league makes only about nineteen times a season. And that usage has barely moved: detected fakes have wobbled between roughly 7 and 27 a year for the entire span, while ordinary fourth-down aggression transformed around them. Coaches rewrote the go-for-it chapter and left the fake punt page untouched.

The fake field goal is the opposite story. It converts 27.9 percent of the time, averages -1.57 expected points, and it is dying: from about a dozen a season in 1999 through 2009 down to about three a season since 2018. At counts that small the year-to-year numbers bounce around, but the long arc is a nearly five-fold drop per game, and given the grades, the league is right to let it go.

Chosen fakes and forced fakes

The fake punt's healthy average hides a split that matters. Fakes run by choice, with the team not trailing by more than eight and five or fewer yards to go, convert 62.8 percent of the time. Fakes run under duress, trailing big or facing long distance, convert 46.6 percent. The caveat: each bucket holds a handful of snaps per season, so single-year rates flip signs on volume and the pooled gap, 231 chosen fakes against 283 forced ones, is the readable number. Geography tells the same story: 24.6 percent of fake punts launch from short-distance spots at the offense's own 40 or beyond, versus 13.9 percent of ordinary punts snapped in that same window. The successful fake is picked, not improvised.

One detail that surprised us: it barely matters whether the ball stays on the ground or goes in the air. Fake punts kept as runs convert 54.3 percent; fake-punt throws convert 53.0. The edge is in the decision to fake, not the flavor.

The trick-pass touchdown machine

Since 2002, passes thrown by position players, the receiver reverse pass, the halfback option, score a touchdown on 15.9 percent of attempts. The quarterback rate is about 4 percent. Throw a pass with someone who is not supposed to throw it and the touchdown rate roughly quadruples, because the play only gets called when the defense is set up to be wrong. The tax is real too: 6.1 percent of those throws are intercepted, well over double the quarterback rate. High ceiling, thin floor, exactly what a gadget should be.

Within the gadget family, the receiver is the sharper knife: throws by players rostered at receiver that season come out ahead on expected points 38.0 percent of the time, against 32.4 percent for running back throws.

The fake punt is a good call used sparingly. The fake field goal is a bad call going extinct. The trick pass is a touchdown machine with an interception tax.

The lateral is not a trick

Finally, the play fans file next to the fakes that does not belong there. Scrimmage plays with a lateral come from trailing, final-two-minutes situations 29.2 percent of the time, roughly nine times the 3.2 percent share of ordinary snaps played in those spots. The lateral is desperation with better production value, not deception. When you see one before the fourth quarter, you are watching a called gadget. When you see three in a row at the end, you are watching a team out of options.

How to use it: when your team runs a fake punt on fourth-and-2 from midfield in the second quarter, that is the good version, and the numbers say cheer, not groan. When the fake comes on fourth-and-8 down twelve, the record says it was already half lost when it was called.