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J.J. Post, ESPN
All Alex Besaw needed was a creative 2-point play.
Two weeks ago, Monterey High earned a decisive 40-14 victory in their season-opening game but struggled with extra points. Besaw, the football coach for Monterey High School in Monterey, California, wondered if it would be worth attempting more 2-point conversions. Assistant Albert Platt mentioned that his boss from his previous assistant gig, Jeremy Plaa, had creative schemes that might help.
Platt contacted Plaa, who agreed to send Hudl footage from his school, Thomas Downey High in Modesto, California. Plaa sent a couple of intriguing plays, but the clip that caught Besaw’s eyes had nothing to do with 2-point conversions.
It was “Vomit,” a fake punt play that Plaa has been dialing up for two decades. Aptly named for its unconventional method of delivery, in which the punter winds up softball-style in order to throw a high-arcing pass underhand to a gunner, Besaw’s first reaction to the fake was confusion.
“I had to watch it 10-to-15 different times to realize what was actually going on,” he told ESPN. “I was like, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before.'”
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Thomas Downey High School has a history of punt trickery
Check out the creative trick play that Thomas Downey High School has pulled off several times over the years.
Confusion is understandable for a trick that has been baffling opponents for years.
Plaa has called Vomit 10 different times at three different schools over the course of his head-coaching career, dating to 1999. Six have succeeded, including four of its past five attempts.
Vomit is as much of a mind trick as it is an effective play. It capitalizes on reversing everything punt return units are typically taught.
The shield of blockers in front of the punter restricts visibility of the play’s initiation, preventing players from realizing that the ball is being thrown and not kicked. Once in the air, what’s perceived to be a low, short punt, often prompts the instinctive reaction of return units to run away from the ball, as they’ve been taught on such punts. By the time the return team — now needing to play defense — realizes it’s a fake, it’s usually too late.
Despite its simple, playground game-esque elegance, Vomit isn’t easy to run.
For one, its unique nature means that once Plaa calls it, Vomit has to be retired for years until opponents have had enough time to forget it. Its potential usage is all but exclusively reserved for opponents out of Thomas Downey’s conference, teams that are less likely to have heard of Plaa’s fake.
And not every punter is capable of pulling it off — Vomit requires a mix of arm strength and mastery of a unique launch angle. According to Plaa, in many years the play has to be dropped from his arsenal because he might not have a punter who can execute the throw.
“One of the difficulties with the play is: Can your punter throw it underhand 25 to 30 yards?” he said. “[In 1999] we had a kid that could do it. The clip that went viral, that kid could do it. Not every punter can do it. Our punter right now tried it last year, and he basically throws it straight up in the air.”
Referees are also an X factor. Because while opponents might not expect the fake punt, officials certainly do.
“The funny thing is when I talk to referees before the game, if they’ve had us before and they’ve seen us run the play, they’ll be like ‘Oh, you guys are the ones that do that fake punt. Are you going to do it this game?'” Plaa said.
Referee awareness is critical, because a catch isn’t the only way to score a win on the fake. If the confused opposing punt return team knocks down Downey’s gunner, that’s textbook pass interference and an automatic first down.
“In the 10 times that we’ve ever ran it I’d say probably twice our kids were just destroyed,” Plaa said. “And we got the pass interference and we got the first down call.”
Besaw watched the clip repeatedly, in awe of the play. As the owner of an X account that shares assorted clips for fans and coaches to learn from, he asked Platt to reach out to Plaa to see if he would be willing to have the clip shared on the account. Plaa obliged.
“I’m like, ‘I don’t care, you guys are in Monterey which is like 2½ hours away from here. I doubt any of our local people are going to see it. So yeah, go ahead, feel free.”
But a couple of hours later, Plaa’s phone started blowing up.
Social media couldn’t get enough of Vomit. At the time of publication, the clip has just under three million views on X. It has been shared thousands of times, and picked up by various media outlets.
Besaw, who has been operating @Spread_Offense since 2019, was blown away by the response.
“I’ve never experienced anything like that,” he said. “I wasn’t around my phone. I think I posted it in the morning, or maybe some point in the afternoon. Next thing I know on X it was liked over a thousand times and retweeted and [on] Instagram it took off. … I was getting bombarded with a bunch of notifications all at once.”
Plaa said it was cool to see his school and team in the news. But fame comes with a price.
Thomas Downey hadn’t called Vomit since 2018, and Plaa had been eyeing his squad’s next few games as a perfect opportunity to break out the play. He determined that with additional reps on the practice field his punter could be ready for throwing action. Two nonconference opponents were on the docket, so the play’s reputation was unlikely to precede it.
No such luck.
“Now that millions of people have seen this thing it’s pretty much ruined for years I’m guessing,” he said.
But what’s a few more years for a play that has been in Plaa’s back pocket since 2018? It won’t be the first time Plaa has had to play the long game when it comes to Vomit’s usage — but here’s guessing it won’t be the last.
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