Georgia football: The devastating beauty of David Greene’s play-action

One play that Georgia football fans loved to see was David Greene’s play-action pass. But sometimes, Greene took the play a step further.

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The play-action pass is one of the most commonly used plays in all of football. It doesn’t matter if a team runs a pro-style, spread, triple-option, run-and-shoot, they have play-action pass plays in their playbook.

Perhaps no play in all of football has the potential to be consistently devastating for defenses. The offense gets their run game going, and then suddenly the quarterback fakes the handoff and throws the ball to a wide open receiver.

It’s such a major part of the sport that quarterbacks are judged on their ability to execute the fake hand-off believably. Many quarterbacks in college and the pro’s have been known for this ability.

But for my money, the best college quarterback to run play-action passes was David Greene.

There was just something about the way Greene sold the fake hand-off. Whether it was in 2002 when Musa Smith was in the backfield or in 2003 when Greene didn’t even have a great tailback for much of the year. Greene’s fake handoff’s were always believable and potent.

Then there were times that Greene took the play-action a step further.

At times, Greene would sell the fake just a bit more by just turning his back to the play. As you could see in the video from the 2002 game against Vanderbilt, the defense began to tackle Smith because they just knew that Greene didn’t have the ball.

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Only he did have the ball and the defense was so preoccupied with Smith that they didn’t even notice Terrence Edwards running downfield.

This wasn’t the only time that Greene ran the hidden ball play-action. Auburn and Georgia Tech were other victims of this play. Each time worked just as well.

Of course this play remained a part of Georgia’s playbook after Greene left Athens. Matthew Stafford, Joe Cox, Aaron Murray and Hutson Mason all tried the play at least once.

But none of them ran it as well as Greene. Although Murray probably ran the play the best out of all of Georgia’s quarterbacks after Greene.

But Murray was occasionally sacked when he tried to run the hidden ball play-action. Greene was never touched on the play.

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For 15 years, the play was a major staple of Georgia’s offense and fans knew that they could see it on any given Saturday. But the Bulldog Nation anticipated the play much more when Greene was the quarterback.

When the play was called, Georgia fans watched and cheered, while opponents watched in horror as a big play for the Bulldogs unfolded.