Photo by: All Pro Photography/Dale Sparks
Mountaineer Memories: Brady's Two Legs Better Than One in 2006 Sugar Bowl
June 01, 2020 06:30 PM | Football, Blog
The Mountaineer Sports Network from Learfield IMG College is pleased to present, in conjunction with corporate partners and radio affiliate partners throughout the state, classic WVU radio broadcasts from recent history made available to fans through a combination of terrestrial radio and on-demand digital platforms.
Today's replay is West Virginia's 38-35 victory over eighth-ranked Georgia in the Nokia Sugar Bowl played on Jan. 2, 2006 in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia.
Presented by Highmark
This story first appeared in Jed Drenning's The Signal Caller 5th Annual College Football Preview, published in 2014.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – For all of the great runs made by West Virginia University football players through the years the one that was the toughest – and easily the most meaningful – came from a 5-foot-9-inch, 185-pound punter.
That, of course, being Phil Brady's fake punt run for a first down late in the fourth quarter of the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta that sealed West Virginia's historic 38-35 victory and placed Mountaineer football on an entirely different level in the eyes of the college football world.
The fake Brady managed to pull off was actually one the Mountaineers had been practicing since the Louisville game that season. It was called "Split-Roll Hammer" and it was the product of Rich Rodriguez's fertile coaching mind.
Each week following that great triple-overtime victory over the Cardinals, Rodriguez forced himself to spend a little time during practice working on that fake punt … just in case. It required Brady to take two deliberate steps like he was going to punt the ball and then tuck it underneath his arm and run as fast as he could – for as far as he could – right up the middle of the field.
In order to make the play work, the three protectors in the middle had to gang up on the nose and the other seven guys spread across the field had to run like hell downfield to sell the punt. Then, when the defenders on the return team took off with them, Brady was free to start running.
"With the four-week layoff before the bowl game we had practiced it for eight weeks," Brady, now a ninth-grade algebra teacher at Robinson High in hometown of Fairfax, Virginia, recalled. "Early on, I was taking those two false steps to make it look like I was going to punt and I was starting to get lackadaisical with it."
For anyone who knows Rich Rodriguez, lackadaisical is located right near the top of his list of the Seven Deadly Football Sins, probably before Gluttony and Envy.
"I would catch it and just start running and I got called out by Coach Rod one day in practice," said Brady. "He said to take those two cheat steps and really sell it before I took off running."
After all, you never know when it might be needed.
Each time West Virginia lined up to punt against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, Rodriguez was on the headsets with his assistant coaches asking if Split-Roll Hammer was there because they had noticed in prep leading up to the Sugar Bowl that the Bulldog players liked to turn their backs and take off running to set up the return before the football was even airborne.
"They saw the look each time we punted and I think we punted four times and that fake would have been the fifth," said Brady. "From what I heard, Rich was asking about it and nobody wanted to be the one to put their neck out there and say 'yeah coach, it's there.' In the fourth quarter, when the fake punt came around, he asked the same thing and no one responded again and he said, '(Expletive) it, we're running it.'"
At that point, West Virginia was staring at a fourth and 6 at the Georgia 48-yard line with 1:45 left on the clock and the Bulldogs still possessing two timeouts. The way West Virginia was leaking oil and Georgia was moving the football on the Mountaineer defense, Rodriguez figured it was time to double down on his punter.
Rodriguez called timeout and kept his offense out on the field for as long as he could, forcing Georgia to keep its defensive players on the field, too.
"I started to go out on the field and Coach Rod yelled 'get back here!' – with that look that he always gave," Brady laughed.
Rodriguez didn't want his punter to let Georgia know that his mind was made up to send the punting team on the field. When he told Brady what he wanted to do, he also added "Alert," which meant that the final signal to run the fake would come from the sidelines by assistant coach Butch Jones, WVU's wide receivers coach who was also in charge of the punt team that year.
If they got what they were looking for the fake was on, so the players were instructed to keep looking to the sideline until the final signal was given.
Rodriguez didn't ask any of his defensive coaches what they thought if Brady didn't make it, nor did he have any second thoughts about running it. All he did was ask assistant coach Herb Hand sitting up in the press box what he saw.
"It's there!" Hand answered, almost in a yell.
Rodriguez told Jones to go ahead and signal the fake, so Jones violently shook his fist up and down in a hammering motion. It was time to hammer that last nail into Georgia's coffin.
Naturally, Brady missed the signal.
"I looked over too late so I had to run up to (protector Marc) Magro," he said. "You can see the play on YouTube. I kind of had my hands up to my earhole because I couldn't hear anything and I said, 'Marc, was that the signal?' Marc didn't say anything to me. He just started calling it out 'Hammer! Hammer! Hammer!' and I went back thinking, 'Oh, God.'"
This was all happening just seconds before Tim Lindsey snapped the ball, meaning it was already too late to check out of it. The game – the Sugar Bowl no less and the reputation of Eastern college football – was on hanging on Phil Brady now.
When the ball was snapped Brady sold it perfectly, but Ridwan Malik, one of West Virginia's outside guys, didn't. As Malik began to run downfield, he took a quick peek back at Brady, momentarily alerting Georgia defender Tre Battle that something was on.
Owen Schmitt and Magro had no trouble handling Georgia nose Tony Milton, a 200-pound senior running back, and that allowed Mike Villagrana to take off downfield looking for someone else to block.
But Battle was close enough to possibly get to Brady, who actually had to run about 20 yards just to make the six needed to keep the chains and the clock moving. Luckily, Malik got in the way of Battle just enough to give Brady the room he needed to get past him.
A few West Virginia assistants also tipped their hand when they began to walk down to where the first down marker was when they heard "Hammer!" being called out in their headsets. Had the Georgia coaches really been paying attention from the other side of the field, they would have seen a couple of very concerned West Virginia defensive coaches lining themselves right up with where Brady needed to reach the first down.
"Looking back on it, you have even more respect for the vision guys like Stave (Slaton) and Pat (White) have because when I saw it later from the Sky Cam angle they had on TV, there were so many alleys for me to choose and I didn't see a single one of them when I was running the ball," he said.
Brady also didn't have a clue that he needed to get to the 42 to make a first down either.
"That yellow line that they project on TV is not on the field," Brady laughed. "(The fans) were probably all yelling, 'Get down you idiot punter! Get down!' I had no idea how far I had gotten, I just knew I had to get as far as I could."
Brady got just far enough to help West Virginia secure the single most important football victory in school history – one that reaped many accolades on the coaching staff responsible for overseeing it.
Rodriguez, of course, went on to earn two pay raises at West Virginia before moving on, first to Michigan, and then to Arizona. Bill Stewart, who oversaw the special teams unit that night, succeeded Rodriguez at WVU.
Butch Jones is now the head coach at Tennessee; Jeff Casteel, Bill Kirelawich and Calvin Magee each have key roles with Rodriguez at Arizona; Rick Trickett is the associate head coach and offensive line coach at defending national champion Florida State; Tony Gibson is Dana Holgorsen's defensive coordinator here at WVU and Bruce Tall is now Charlotte's top defensive strategist.
And Hand, the guy watching it all from above and the one coach crazy enough to stick his neck out to call the fake punt, is now coaching Penn State's offensive line. That's one helluva football staff – one that finally got its due when a punter, of all players, made the run of his life.
"Who has ever heard of a punter being remember for two legs instead of one?" Brady asked rhetorically.
Well, the people around here anyway.
Today's replay is West Virginia's 38-35 victory over eighth-ranked Georgia in the Nokia Sugar Bowl played on Jan. 2, 2006 in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, Georgia.
Presented by Highmark
This story first appeared in Jed Drenning's The Signal Caller 5th Annual College Football Preview, published in 2014.
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – For all of the great runs made by West Virginia University football players through the years the one that was the toughest – and easily the most meaningful – came from a 5-foot-9-inch, 185-pound punter.
That, of course, being Phil Brady's fake punt run for a first down late in the fourth quarter of the 2006 Nokia Sugar Bowl in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta that sealed West Virginia's historic 38-35 victory and placed Mountaineer football on an entirely different level in the eyes of the college football world.
The fake Brady managed to pull off was actually one the Mountaineers had been practicing since the Louisville game that season. It was called "Split-Roll Hammer" and it was the product of Rich Rodriguez's fertile coaching mind.
Each week following that great triple-overtime victory over the Cardinals, Rodriguez forced himself to spend a little time during practice working on that fake punt … just in case. It required Brady to take two deliberate steps like he was going to punt the ball and then tuck it underneath his arm and run as fast as he could – for as far as he could – right up the middle of the field.
In order to make the play work, the three protectors in the middle had to gang up on the nose and the other seven guys spread across the field had to run like hell downfield to sell the punt. Then, when the defenders on the return team took off with them, Brady was free to start running.
"With the four-week layoff before the bowl game we had practiced it for eight weeks," Brady, now a ninth-grade algebra teacher at Robinson High in hometown of Fairfax, Virginia, recalled. "Early on, I was taking those two false steps to make it look like I was going to punt and I was starting to get lackadaisical with it."
For anyone who knows Rich Rodriguez, lackadaisical is located right near the top of his list of the Seven Deadly Football Sins, probably before Gluttony and Envy.
"I would catch it and just start running and I got called out by Coach Rod one day in practice," said Brady. "He said to take those two cheat steps and really sell it before I took off running."
After all, you never know when it might be needed.
Each time West Virginia lined up to punt against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, Rodriguez was on the headsets with his assistant coaches asking if Split-Roll Hammer was there because they had noticed in prep leading up to the Sugar Bowl that the Bulldog players liked to turn their backs and take off running to set up the return before the football was even airborne.
"They saw the look each time we punted and I think we punted four times and that fake would have been the fifth," said Brady. "From what I heard, Rich was asking about it and nobody wanted to be the one to put their neck out there and say 'yeah coach, it's there.' In the fourth quarter, when the fake punt came around, he asked the same thing and no one responded again and he said, '(Expletive) it, we're running it.'"
At that point, West Virginia was staring at a fourth and 6 at the Georgia 48-yard line with 1:45 left on the clock and the Bulldogs still possessing two timeouts. The way West Virginia was leaking oil and Georgia was moving the football on the Mountaineer defense, Rodriguez figured it was time to double down on his punter.
Rodriguez called timeout and kept his offense out on the field for as long as he could, forcing Georgia to keep its defensive players on the field, too.
"I started to go out on the field and Coach Rod yelled 'get back here!' – with that look that he always gave," Brady laughed.
Rodriguez didn't want his punter to let Georgia know that his mind was made up to send the punting team on the field. When he told Brady what he wanted to do, he also added "Alert," which meant that the final signal to run the fake would come from the sidelines by assistant coach Butch Jones, WVU's wide receivers coach who was also in charge of the punt team that year.
If they got what they were looking for the fake was on, so the players were instructed to keep looking to the sideline until the final signal was given.
Rodriguez didn't ask any of his defensive coaches what they thought if Brady didn't make it, nor did he have any second thoughts about running it. All he did was ask assistant coach Herb Hand sitting up in the press box what he saw.
"It's there!" Hand answered, almost in a yell.
Rodriguez told Jones to go ahead and signal the fake, so Jones violently shook his fist up and down in a hammering motion. It was time to hammer that last nail into Georgia's coffin.
Naturally, Brady missed the signal.
"I looked over too late so I had to run up to (protector Marc) Magro," he said. "You can see the play on YouTube. I kind of had my hands up to my earhole because I couldn't hear anything and I said, 'Marc, was that the signal?' Marc didn't say anything to me. He just started calling it out 'Hammer! Hammer! Hammer!' and I went back thinking, 'Oh, God.'"
This was all happening just seconds before Tim Lindsey snapped the ball, meaning it was already too late to check out of it. The game – the Sugar Bowl no less and the reputation of Eastern college football – was on hanging on Phil Brady now.
When the ball was snapped Brady sold it perfectly, but Ridwan Malik, one of West Virginia's outside guys, didn't. As Malik began to run downfield, he took a quick peek back at Brady, momentarily alerting Georgia defender Tre Battle that something was on.
Owen Schmitt and Magro had no trouble handling Georgia nose Tony Milton, a 200-pound senior running back, and that allowed Mike Villagrana to take off downfield looking for someone else to block.
But Battle was close enough to possibly get to Brady, who actually had to run about 20 yards just to make the six needed to keep the chains and the clock moving. Luckily, Malik got in the way of Battle just enough to give Brady the room he needed to get past him.
A few West Virginia assistants also tipped their hand when they began to walk down to where the first down marker was when they heard "Hammer!" being called out in their headsets. Had the Georgia coaches really been paying attention from the other side of the field, they would have seen a couple of very concerned West Virginia defensive coaches lining themselves right up with where Brady needed to reach the first down.
"Looking back on it, you have even more respect for the vision guys like Stave (Slaton) and Pat (White) have because when I saw it later from the Sky Cam angle they had on TV, there were so many alleys for me to choose and I didn't see a single one of them when I was running the ball," he said.Brady also didn't have a clue that he needed to get to the 42 to make a first down either.
"That yellow line that they project on TV is not on the field," Brady laughed. "(The fans) were probably all yelling, 'Get down you idiot punter! Get down!' I had no idea how far I had gotten, I just knew I had to get as far as I could."
Brady got just far enough to help West Virginia secure the single most important football victory in school history – one that reaped many accolades on the coaching staff responsible for overseeing it.
Rodriguez, of course, went on to earn two pay raises at West Virginia before moving on, first to Michigan, and then to Arizona. Bill Stewart, who oversaw the special teams unit that night, succeeded Rodriguez at WVU.
Butch Jones is now the head coach at Tennessee; Jeff Casteel, Bill Kirelawich and Calvin Magee each have key roles with Rodriguez at Arizona; Rick Trickett is the associate head coach and offensive line coach at defending national champion Florida State; Tony Gibson is Dana Holgorsen's defensive coordinator here at WVU and Bruce Tall is now Charlotte's top defensive strategist.
And Hand, the guy watching it all from above and the one coach crazy enough to stick his neck out to call the fake punt, is now coaching Penn State's offensive line. That's one helluva football staff – one that finally got its due when a punter, of all players, made the run of his life.
"Who has ever heard of a punter being remember for two legs instead of one?" Brady asked rhetorically.
Well, the people around here anyway.
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