8slim said:Is it really that critical to get a team to burn a time out, anyway? I mean that seems to be one of the two desired outcomes of that comical fake punt call. I just don't think it's worth anyone's time to be practicing a play where the best-case scenario is getting the other team to call a TO or lure them into a too-many-men penalty. Practice time is precious, why waste on such a low-impact play?
Timeouts can be a big deal. If you get a team to burn one there and Bill has a bad challenge, then the team is down to one effective timeout for the half. This is the type of play that you can teach a team in one 15-minute practice session. It really doesn't require that much help. We used to put in fakes on a weekly basis in college based on what the other team showed on tape, and it would literally be 10-15 minutes of Tuesday practice, a few reps on both Wednesday and Thursday, and a couple reps in walkthrough on Friday. There aren't any reads, there aren't any wrinkles, fakes like this are just go or no-go. So to mess this up is really, really bad. I'm not exaggerating when I say HS teams could do this more effectively.