Washington coach Chris Petersen is something of a connoisseur of the trick play. And he’s famous for springing it in the Fiesta Bowl. With the game on the line, Washington tried the hook-and-lateral play to try and win the 2017 Fiesta Bowl.
It didn’t work.
There’s no reason for receiver Dante Pettis to try and lateral this where he is on the field with time still on the clock, which makes you think that he was either coached to just try to make a play with the assumption that time would expire, or he just lost track of time. There likely wasn’t enough time for him to look at the clock to understand game situation, and in a panicked spot, he just tried to do whatever he could.
Dante Pettis on last play: "It was a hook and lateral, so normally we try to keep the ball alive. I didn’t know there were still five seconds left, so I just tried to make a play. Looking back, knowing there were 5 seconds, I easily could have stepped out of bounds."
— Adam Jude (@A_Jude) December 31, 2017
While the Statue of Liberty play is the one we all remember from Boise State’s epic Fiesta Bowl win over Oklahoma a decade ago, Boise State still had to tie that game to force the epic overtime period. Petersen’s Broncos nailed the hook-and-lateral play to do that back then.
In the 2017 Fiesta Bowl, Petersen dialed it up again in nearly the exact same game situation. Down 35-28 on a fourth down heading to the same end zone of University Of Phoenix Stadium with the time running down.
But there would be no Cinderella ending this time.