Trailing by 10 points in the second half, deep in his own territory on fourth-and-10 with his team in desperate need of a spark, Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee took matters into his own hands.
The punter took a slightly off-target snap and rumbled 18 yards for a first down. As many suspected, it was not a called fake, but an in-play audible by McAfee.
"This was a situational thing," McAfee said, via StampedeBlue.com. "If I happen to get a snap that brings me out of the pocket a little bit and I see that the edge is wide open, I kinda got the green light. And that's talked about probably once in training camp, but if that situation ever pops up, you know you'd better go ahead and get it."
The play helped earn McAfee the Week 3 AFC Special Teams Player of the Week award. The punter knows had he failed to convert, he'd have gotten a much more painful prize.
"But if I don't get it there, I'm probably walking back to a punch in the face from Coach Pagano and Tom McMahon, our special teams coach," McAfee said. "Very happy we got it; picked up some momentum there. Wish we would have done something with it, but that's just situational ball where, we have such good coaches here. Tom McMahon, Brant Boyer, and Pagano keep us on our Ps and Qs with every situation that pops up. That one popped up, we took advantage of it, it was a lot of fun. I'm still trying to catch my breath from it."
Andrew Luck threw an interception three plays later, but the conversion seemed to help ignite a theretofore absent bravado on the Colts' sideline as they rallied in the fourth quarter for the 35-33 win.
After his first successful fake punt rush -- he threw an incomplete pass last season on a fake -- there is one thing on McAfee's mind:
