‘It felt like we lost 1,000 yards’: Players recount bizarre K-State football blooper

Imagine one of the best quarterbacks in Kansas State history nonchalantly flipping the football behind his back to a supremely talented receiver on a trick play.

Sounds good, right?

Shortly after Collin Klein laterals the ball to Chris Harper, who is running full steam toward the right sideline on a reverse while all of his teammates are pushing forward on what looks like a jump pass at the goal line, the Wildcats wildly celebrate a touchdown and the successful completion of a misdirection play that few saw coming.

That’s how former offensive coordinator Dana Dimel expected things to go when the play was called with the Wildcats facing a third-and-goal late in the second quarter of a game against Miami in 2012.

Alas, that is not how the play is remembered a decade later. Today, it’s a blooper.

“There’s no forgetting about the behind-the-back play,” Harper said. “In hindsight, the whole play looks incredibly stupid. It’s the opposite of a highlight. It was terrible. But the play was actually dope. We were excited to use it.”

Nearly 10 years have passed since the Wildcats botched one of the most bizarre plays in the history of Bill Snyder Family Stadium for a 19-year loss that nearly resulted in a turnover, but the players involved recall it like it happened days ago.

What went wrong?

You know how the play was supposed to work. Here’s what actually happened:

The Wildcats lined up with 10 players stacked behind the ball and only Harper lined up wide to the right. Then Harper went in motion until he was on Klein’s left and the ball was snapped.

Klein took the snap out of a shotgun formation and plowed forward as if he was trying to score on a keeper or a jump pass. Meanwhile, Harper spun and came running behind Klein for the no-look pitch. But Klein didn’t have as much running room as he expected, and his jump and lateral came too early. That left Harper in no position to make a catch and sprint into the end zone. The ball scurried by him and he ended up chasing it down outside the red zone, where he was quickly knocked to the ground ... appropriately on accident by a teammate.

A bewildered crowd tried to comprehend why K-State’s quarterback had tossed the ball 10 yards in the wrong direction and the TV broadcast immediately cut to Snyder on the sideline, who was irate.

“When you take big risks on the opposite side is big failure,” Harper said. “The play was going to work. Unfortunately one of their linemen just destroyed us at the snap and he pushed one our offensive lineman back into Collin, so when Collin was trying to throw it messed up our spacing.

“He pushed Collin back and then I had to run after the ball. I tried to reverse field and made it an even bigger loss. It felt like we lost 1,000 yards on that play. I know it really hurt my rushing average.”

Credit former Miami defensive lineman Olsen Pierre for ruining the trick play by beating a double team at the line of scrimmage.

Klein, who now serves as K-State’s offensive coordinator, watched a replay of the trick play on a cell phone earlier this week and expressed several different facial expressions as he saw his former self pitch the ball backward for a big loss without any knowledge of what was happening behind him.

First came a smile and laughter. Next he shook his head and sighed. At one point, he closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with his right hand. Then, finally, after viewing the blunder that has since been watched nearly 1.6 million times on YouTube, he shared his memories.

“The timing was just a little off,” Klein said. “But if you watch it again there is no one on the edge and he walks in (if I get him the ball). We practiced that play all week and it worked every time. We ran it perfectly. But we weren’t going against the Miami defense. The timing got messed up, but it would have been a touchdown otherwise.”

You’re either a genius or an idiot

Even in failure, the unorthodox trick play has found a special place in the hearts and minds of the K-State fans who watched it live.

The Wildcats were winning 24-3 when the play was called and the gaffe did nothing to slow their momentum. They went on to win big, 52-13. It was their first statement victory in a season filled with many of them. K-State finished 11-2 and won the Big 12 that year. The Wildcats were even ranked No. 1 in the BCS standings before a road loss to Baylor knocked them out of the national championship mix.

After fans stopped trying to figure out what in the world they just saw on Klein’s no-look lateral to Harper, some embraced the play as a sign of that team’s dominance.

How many other teams could try a play that bold, screw it up that badly and still beat Miami by nearly 40 points?

“We probably got on the Not Top 10 for that,” Harper said. “But that’s all right. It was one of those plays that was going to end with people saying, ‘Oh my god, you’re a genius’ or ‘Oh my god, you’re an idiot. There was no in between and we knew that going in.”

Believe it or not, K-State players came up with the idea for the infamous trick play.

The Wildcats scored a touchdown against Miami a year earlier on a jump pass from Klein to former tight end Travis Tannahill at the goal line. The thinking was that if they made it look like they were running the same play, but instead flipped the ball backward to Harper on a reverse, they would catch the Hurricanes by surprise.

“Coaches are really scary,” Harper said. “They will prepare for a trick play a team did one time two years ago and they will make you prepare for it 50,000 times in practice. That was our one shot at it.”

The Wildcats have never been known for using track plays, but the coaching staff was receptive to the idea that week.

“Coach Snyder gave us the freedom to be creative,” Klein said. “We were the ones who came up with it. We put it in and proposed the idea and he let us practice it all week. They obviously had confidence in us to give us a shot.”

“We’re not calling that again”

Harper, a former coveted recruit out of Wichita Northwest who went on to become a fourth-round selection in the NFL Draft, thought the play was going to get him on Sportscenter.

Instead, it carved out a unique spot for him in K-State football lore.

Perhaps Klein will revive the play at some point next season now that he is at the controls of K-State’s offense as a coordinator. After all, he did suggest to Snyder that they try it again later that season.

“I can’t remember which game it was, but we were inside the 10 and we were trying to figure out what to call,” Klein said, “so I turned to Coach Snyder and said, ‘We should try that reverse deal again.’ He was like, ‘Oh no, never. We’re not calling that again.’ I was totally kidding, but it’s all a funny story now.”