The quarterback receives the snap from the center and fakes a handoff to the running back. Then he pivots right and fakes another handoff to the fullback. Then he fakes two more handoffs in quick succession: to a wide receiver, and then, once again, to the running back, who looped back behind the line of scrimmage during all the faking. Pretty soon, the defense catches on and goes after the quarterback, at which point the actual trick is revealed: the first fake handoff was real.

Musical Chairs
The offense arrives on the field with a two-receiver, two-end package. The receivers bunch to the left and the first tight end splits out wide to the right. Then the quarterback starts patting his pockets and looking around anxiously, as if he can’t find his keys. Meanwhile, the second tight end—who has a beautiful singing voice—drifts into the backfield and croons selections from “A Little Night Music.” This continues until the referee blows the whistle for delay of game.
This play will not yield any yards, but it will get the defense thinking.

Double Trick Inside Stunt
Essentially, a well-disguised variation on the strong-side blitz. For the first trick, the strong-side linebacker “stunts” inside the defensive tackle to confuse the blockers. The other trick is that they’re all on steroids.

The Open-Source Sweep
A week before the big game, team officials engineer a “chance encounter” between the opposing quarterback and the actor Jake Gyllenhaal. The pair become fast friends, attending a number of folk concerts and rummage sales together. As their relationship blossoms, Gyllenhaal inculcates the quarterback with progressive ideas about transparency and freedom of information, and by the end of the week he convinces the quarterback to post his team’s playbook on WikiLeaks. The team loses five of its next six games, and the quarterback is benched. As for Jake Gyllenhaal, he is eventually cleared of any wrongdoing, and is hired by Fox Sports to join Howie Long and Michael Strahan on the Sunday N.F.L. pre-game show.

Last Man Standing
In a single-back, four-wideout formation, the quarterback accidentally sends the receivers on identical crossing routes, causing a spectacular collision at midfield. The defense seizes the advantage: they overpower the offensive line and pancake the quarterback for a substantial loss, leaving only the running back to tell their stories and sing their songs and pass on their proud traditions of hunting and leatherwork.

The Sleight of Hand
The quarterback lines up behind the center and takes the snap. But as he drops back we see that he’s holding not a football but a basketball. This causes the defense to hesitate, and the quarterback lobs the basketball deep to the wide receiver. The receiver catches it in stride for a touchdown—at which point the ball turns into a bouquet of roses. If, however, the ball is intercepted, it turns into bees.

Buried Treasure!
After sacking the quarterback, a defensive lineman “accidentally” leaves behind a tattered parchment scroll that turns out to be a sixteenth-century treasure map. In the second half, the quarterback is consumed with visions of rubies, silver coins, and gold bullion. He recruits a party of his most trusted offensive linemen and together they embark on a two-week journey to a forgotten island off the coast of Guadeloupe. They return, bedraggled but successful, bearing a treasure worth nearly eighty thousand dollars—only to discover that the combined lost salary for the weeks they missed added up to $4.3 million. The season ends badly, with the team slipping into last place and the starting left guard succumbing to wounds sustained in a cutlass fight.

West Coast Misdirection
During the off-season, the opposing quarterback is again approached by the actor Jake Gyllenhaal. The quarterback warns Gyllenhaal to keep his distance, but Gyllenhaal tells him that it isn’t like that—he wants to offer the quarterback a part in an independent film he is producing, called “The Quarterback and the Dame,” about an unlikely romance between a gridiron hero and the English stage legend Judi Dench. The quarterback reads the script, and he has to admit it’s pretty good, so he signs on. The quarterback arrives on the set for the first day of shooting, only to find Gyllenhaal costumed in shoulder pads and eye black. The quarterback goes berserk, believing that he’d been promised the part.
“No, no,” Gyllenhaal coos, “you’re playing Judi Dench.”

The End of Days
In the waning seconds of the first half of the N.F.C. championship game, the pious visiting quarterback leads a masterly eighty-yard drive, culminating in a fifteen-yard touchdown strike. As his teammates celebrate, the quarterback drops to one knee to thank Jesus. Just then, the Rapture comes, and the quarterback is instantly beamed up to Heaven, leaving only his cleats behind. The visiting team is forced to play the second half with the inconsistent journeyman Billy Joe Hobert, who throws three interceptions, and they end up losing the game, 42–10. The home team advances to the Super Bowl—only to lose in heartbreaking fashion, when what would have been the winning field goal caroms off an apocalyptic horseman and falls wide right.


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2010/10/04/101004sh_shouts_brenner?printable=true#ixzz12H2mbwxx