It was one of the finest moments in American film history. Trailing the Urbana Cowboys with time left for only one play, the Little Giants pulled out their secret weapon: "The Annexation of Puerto Rico." A complicated play involving several passes and laterals, the Annexation won the game for the underdogs in the timeless cinematic classic from 1994, "Little Giants."
While the movie couldn't have ended without the good guys coming through in the clutch to win, the fact that Rick Moranis' character and his rag-tag bunch of players were able to emerge victorious over a bigger and more talented squad through creative play calling is consistent with a common belief among football experts: The more surprise plays you have in the vault, the better.
Why? Because the last thing you want to do is commit the mortal sin of running the same play twice in a row. I can't even remember how many times I sat frustrated at my Sega Genesis as John Madden's voice came through the speaker saying something to the extent of, "You're not going to fool them twice in a row." And if you can't trust John Madden when it comes to football advice, who can you trust?
While running "HB toss left" over and over again didn't do me any good as a nine year old in John Madden Football '92, the Virginia Cavaliers proved yesterday that Madden might be mistaken in his analysis after all.
In their 16-0 shutout over Maryland Saturday, the Cavaliers not only silenced the non-believers (I'm looking at you, Herbstreit), but did it with Maryland knowing exactly what Virginia was going to run every time. The Cavaliers ran for 295 yards against the Terrapins despite using the same six or seven plays over and over again.
"It's not hard -- teams know what we're going to do," running back Alvin Pearman said. "They know what type of plays we're going to run. We're not a dink and dunk team -- we're not going to do anything crazy out there. We just stick to good old fashioned football, and that's run it right at you."
The Cavaliers ran three times as many rushing plays as passing plays, as the offensive line put forth a dominant performance to help Virginia steadily march down field on almost every drive.
Play after play, the Terrapins saw the same thing over and over again. Sometimes it was Alvin Pearman, other times it was Wali Lundy. Either way, a Cavalier running back was running off tackle, dicing through holes opened up by the offensive line. Virginia was content with "pounding the ball down [Maryland's] throat" as Terrapin coach Ralph Friedgen put it, without any need to disguise their plays. In fact, the Cavaliers take pride in their unoriginality.
"We feel like if you have to keep using different plays to beat a team, than you're not going to be a very good team," running back Wali Lundy said. "If we're able to run the same play at you every down and just dominate you, than we are going to have good plays."
The irony of all this is that Friedgen, the losing coach, is famous for his comprehensive playbook, said to be as thick as the New York City phonebook with its 600-plus pages. All those plays didn't do him much good against the Cavaliers, who kept his team off the scoreboard throughout the entire game.
The Annexation of Puerto Rico may have won the game for the Little Giants (and chances are Friedgen has his own version of the play buried deep inside his playbook), but Virginia doesn't need gimmicks to find success. The team plays hard-nosed, smash-mouth football. And that's something even John Madden would approve of.
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