MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. -- Andy Teasdall is not a quarterback. Heck, he has never even played quarterback outside of a backyard game with some friends. But the self-described "athlete" made the throw that might define Clemson's 2015 season Thursday night at the College Football Playoff semifinal in the Orange Bowl.
Fake-punt passes are certainly more common in college football than the NFL, but not necessarily when a trip to the CFP National Championship is on the line -- and certainly not when the punter called on to make the play was berated by his coach only a couple weeks earlier after trying but failing on another fake punt in the ACC Championship Game.
Luckily for Teasdall, Dabo Swinney and the Tigers, the two got past that spat quickly, and the coach felt enough confidence in the redshirt junior punter to call a play more than two years in the making.
"That was back in [our playbook] with [former punter Bradley] Pinion. Pinion had that -- it was called 'Concord' because that's where he's from," Teasdall said in the locker room after Thursday's game. "Now it's called 'UConn' because that's where Christian Wilkins [the pass catcher] is from. We practice it every Wednesday. I'd say like two years or so it's been there, practice it every week."
Teasdall said that Clemson runs that particular fake punt only against air in practice, occasionally with a scout team on the field just to give the special teams unit a look at how an opposing team might try to cover it. He wouldn't put a percentage on how often it's successful but stressed that it worked enough that the play is almost always on the docket to potentially be called in a game. "It's not like we gave it more emphasis tonight," he noted.
Had Teasdall failed, an Oklahoma team already up 7-3 would've been 56 yards away from taking a significant lead early in the second quarter. But Teasdall didn't fall short this time; the only thing that fell was his pass -- right into the hands of a 6-foot-4, 315-pound freshman defensive tackle (who Tesadall referred to as an "incredible" basketball player) for a 31-yard gain that put Clemson in scoring position.
Beautiful throw on that fake punt by Clemson pic.twitter.com/bpYw0Fpsow
— The Cauldron (@TheCauldron) December 31, 2015
"We shocked 'em, didn't we?" joked Swinney. "Ain't nobody covering that big ol' guy. ... You saw the athleticism of that big ol' No. 42 because he kind of had to find the ball in the air and get himself in position to finish it."
Unlike the fake in the ACC Championship Game, which resulted in Teasdall being chewed out by Swinney, the punter returned to the sideline in Sun Life Stadium to a big hug. "He just said, 'Wow. Can you believe that?'" Teasdall recalled.
Swinney referred to the play as the "spark that we needed" as Clemson was playing "a little stagnant right there, a little tight." He wanted to send a message to the rest of the Tigers: "'Listen, we're here to play, and let's cut it loose.'"
Teasdall downplayed its significance.
"Some may say that had a big importance -- that's awesome -- but you can never claim one play was the breaking point in a game," he said. "It's just awesome to win one and go undefeated. Awesome to redeem myself a little bit. I'm not going to let this define me, and I wasn't going to let that play [in the ACC Championship Game] define me."
Luckily for Teasdall, he does not get to choose how he's remembered.
For a fan base that is sick and tired of the term "Clemsoning" and being disrespected as an underdog despite playing championship-level football all year, Teasdall's redemption story is a microcosm of the Tigers' season.
Clemson has found itself down on more than one occasion but always finds a way to overcome. You can knock the Tigers down, but they're no longer prone to staying on the ground; instead, they get back up and make the most of their opportunity.
Swinney demanded earlier this season that his players bring their own guts each week. Calling the play and executing it the way Clemson did on Thursday proved there was no shortage of guts on the Tigers sideline.
