In a game full of huge moments and critical turning points, it was perhaps the biggest. With less than two minutes to play, down by two points and with no timeouts left, there was only one possible option. The situation was clear. The Cowboys’ valiant and methodical comeback on Sunday would all be for naught if the special teams unit doesn’t recover an onside kick.
Problem is, the onside kick happens to be just about the most difficult play in football to properly execute. After a 2018 rules change forbidding overloading one side and getting a running start, the chances of the kicking team retaining possession- already a low-probability proposition- fell to about six percent.
The entire world knew an onside kick was coming. They just didn’t know how… except for a select few wearing the silver and blue.
Since the manner in which a kicking team can legally cover an onside attempt has been altered, it has fallen to kickers to come up with a new way to actually make the kick.
“With the new rules, you’ve got to have something slow where your guys can get to the ball,” Cowboys kicker Greg Zuerlein said, per the team website. “In years past you could run, so you could do different things. But now, you’ve got to have something slow. It gives our guys a chance to block and hop on it.”
What Zuerlein did in the waning moments of Sunday’s improbable win was something that almost no one had seen. Even Daryl Johnston in the Fox Sports booth professed that he’d never seen a ball kicked directly off the turf before, with no tee.
The Falcons certainly looked as though they’d never seen anything like the kick that sputtered off Zeuerlein’s foot.
But a few on the Cowboys sideline confessed after the game that they had a sense of what was coming.
“Honestly, you may not believe me,” linebacker Jaylon Smith told reporters in his postgame remarks, “but I called it in pre-snap, because I saw us run it in practice, and it just looked amazing. So from the jump, just understanding the opportunity, I knew that was the kick that was going to occur. I had 100% faith. I wish I could have bet on it, if that was legal.”
“I knew we were going to get that ball,” said C.J. Goodwin, the man who actually recovered the kick. “I told some of my teammates, ‘They’ve never seen an onside kick like that.'”
“I’ve seen it in practice,” coach Mike McCarthy echoed in his press conference, “but that’s the first time I’ve seen it in live action. It was a beauty, that’s for sure.”
“We had to call an onside kick, obviously, if we wanted to win the game,” explained wideout Amari Cooper. “I think it was a great kick, though. It was a great scheme, if you will, to kick the ball like that and have it kind of rolling or twisting a little bit at around seven yards. Kind of playing that mind game with the hands team because they know that we can’t touch it if the ball doesn’t reach ten yards. So they’re not going to touch it. It was just a great kick; it kept spinning until it got to that ten-yard mark, and as soon as it got there, C.J. was able to hop on it.”
“Just swing confidently and the rest will take care of itself,” said Zuerlein, the nine-year veteran who signed with the Cowboys in the offseason. “Anytime you get in a hurry or don’t swing confidently, bad things happen.”
According to Sports Illustrated‘s Albert Breer, the kick is something that Zuerlein and Fassel concocted last year while they were both still in Los Angeles.
In this week’s MMQB column, he writes:
“In 2019, then-Rams special teams coach John Fassel had to adjust an onside kick strategy he had in his bag after the Ravens and Justin Tucker used something similar—it was a funky dropkick that froze the hands team and sent a knuckler their way off a high bounce—and it was subsequently banned by the league. So Fassel, kicker Greg Zuerlein and punter Johnny Hekker devised a new way to force the hands team to think quickly.
“The idea was to tee the ball up at a 45-degree angle and boot the front tip, so it would spin back-to-front to cover the 10 yards it needed to go before the kicking team could legally recover it, but cover that 10 yards as slowly as possible. The logic went that the hands team would have to decide whether to charge the ball (and risk touching it but not covering it, making it a live ball) or let it go 10 yards, with the kicking team around it (making it a 50/50 ball).
“Since the ball would be moving slowly, the kicking team would have time to surround the ball and have time for players to position themselves to cover it 10 yards downfield—with the hands team, the hope went, still wondering what the hell to do.”
The funny part is, the Rams tried the kick against Dallas in Week 15 last season. Punter Johnny Hekker made the attempt that day; it dribbled out of bounds.
On Sunday, though, off of Zuerlein’s foot, it all worked, right down to the receiving team’s reaction.
Atlanta coach Dan Quinn addressed his squad’s kick coverage after Sunday’s game.
“The front three are usually blocking as they’re going,” Quinn said after the game, per the Falcons website. “The high-bouncers go to the second side, so the front line, generally on an onside kick, they’re looking to get a block first and then the hop goes to the next player. When that instance happens, and it’s not one that is a high-hopper then you just transfer in and go to your ball. You’re looking at your assignment first of who you have to go block. Certainly the ball and then your assignment, they definitely know the rule.”
Rest assured that every team in the league will be working in a reminder or two this week about the rules regarding how to cover an onside kick attempt.
And every kicker not named Greg Zuerlein will likely be playing around with ways to boot a ball that’s still lying on the turf.
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