Early in the second quarter of Sunday night’s 31-17 win over the Green Bay Packers, the New England Patriots successfully pulled off a flea flicker.
Running back James White took a handoff and pitched the ball back to quarterback Tom Brady, who in turn hit wide receiver Julian Edelman for a 33-yard gain.
Though another trick play involving those same three players — a double pass from Edelman to White that set up what proved to be the game-winning touchdown — received most of the attention after the game, Patriots coach Bill Belichick offered an in-depth breakdown of the flea flicker and all of its moving parts during his Monday morning conference call.
Here’s Belichick’s answer in full:
“That play is a play that really takes great timing and execution. It’s a hard play to execute on a lot of levels, and there’s some risk to it, obviously. The idea, of course, is to suck the defense up toward the line of scrimmage and then be able to get somebody behind them — either behind the secondary or behind the linebackers. In this case, it was behind the linebackers.
“You always count on the running back to make the right decision. You never want to pitch the ball back if there’s going to be a problem with the pitch back. Now the quarterback’s getting the ball and somebody’s on him — there’s a lot of things that can go wrong there. But James made a great decision. It was a tough one, too, because when he had the ball, (Nick) Perry was up the field, and he just had a good sense and a good feel that he was blocked and he wasn’t really close to Tom.
“But it’s a lot easier when the line of scrimmage is flat and there’s no penetration. Then it’s kind of easy to pitch the ball back and you know the quarterback’s safe. When you pitch it back and there’s a defender behind you where you’re pitching it and you have to count on that guy being blocked, it’s a tougher decision for the back. But James saw it. He made a good (pitch). Trent (Brown) was in good position. Joe (Thuney) was in good position to block on the play, so we were able to get it cleanly executed. But it was a tough play.
“And then, of course, the receivers, Julian (Edelman) and (Chris) Hogan, don’t want to go too fast or the defense will recognize it. They have to make it look like it’s a running play and block and hesitate there for a little bit so that the timing of the play works out but also they don’t give it away and it really appears to everybody that it’s a running play and it turns into a pass play.
“It was very well executed by James, by Tom, by Julian and by the offensive line as a total group to sell the run but still be in a position to pass block and to give everybody an opportunity to handle the ball. I thought Dwayne Allen made a good play on that, too, where (Reggie Gilbert) blitzed and crossed his face and Dwayne kind of flattened him out and gave James a clean chance to get the ball back there.
“So there were a lot of little things on that play. A lot of things that can go wrong, but if it works, there’s an opportunity for a bigger reward. There’s a lot of moving parts to that, so you really want guys who are experienced making the pitch, handling the ball, running the route. You put a lot on those guys, and they did a good job.”
