WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Long before he became the innovative coach of the Cincinnati Bengals, Sam Wyche was working his magic. Football fans remember his ability to pull touchdowns out of his hat, but on plenty of other occasions, he was more likely to pull a rabbit out of that hat, or make coins vanish, or produce the ace of spades you never suspected was in your pocket.
Sam Wyche was, and still is, a magician.
"I got to where I could go a couple of hours without repeating a trick," Wyche says. "In fact, in the off-season I used to do that on stage for a chain of Holiday Inns that had a club at the top."
So it almost goes without saying that Wyche — who still incorporates magic in his motivational-speaking engagements — gives a thumbs up to coach Tony Sparano and the Dolphins for the sleight-of-hand that led to the 38-13 stunner against the New England Patriots last weekend.
The Dolphins scored four touchdowns on the six plays in which they lined up in their "Wildcat" formation with running back Ronnie Brown taking the snap.
That's a 28-point dent toward any conservative coaches who contend that calling trick or gadget plays is tantamount to admitting you're not good enough to beat a team straight up.
"Some coaches have that philosophy, but I don't," says Wyche, a volunteer assistant high school coach in South Carolina. "It's not that you're admitting you're not good enough. It's just admitting you're more capable of expanding your offense. It shows variety, flexibility and it does stimulate the morale of the team. I think they all get fired up on that."
Dan Marino's Clock Play against the New York Jets. The Hook and Lateral in the playoff marathon against the San Diego Chargers. The Music City Miracle. The Stanford Band Play. It turns out fans aren't the only ones who are fans of some of football's most unexpected moments. Wyche says anytime he installed gadget plays, players lined up.
"They were elbowing each other — 'Me next! Let me do it''' Wyche says.
While Sparano talks about how his players "can kind of put their arms around" this new spiced-up approach for however long it may last, endorsements are rolling in.
Bill Cowher, the former Pittsburgh Steelers coach who never shied away from razzle-dazzle involving Kordell Stewart and Antwaan Randle El, says the Dolphins' performance is one for the ages.
"It may go down as one of the most productive game-day plays in the history of the game because it produced a lot of points," says Cowher, an analyst for CBS. Cowher says given Brown's ability to run, throw and catch, "this might be the tip of the iceberg" for what the Dolphins can do with Brown and Ricky Williams in the same packages.
It's not that Brown ran 2 yards for a touchdown the first time the Dolphins used the formation. It's that Brown was able to run for two more touchdowns, and pass for one, while the Patriots, of all teams, failed to even slow them.
"It was pretty neat, what the Dolphins did," says South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier, who ran the Fun 'n' Gun offense with the Florida Gators.
Spurrier had seen this before. The Wildcat was suggested by Dolphins quarterback coach David Lee, who was at the University of Arkansas last year when Darren McFadden ran for 321 yards against the Gamecocks.
"They used to always say, 'Well, you can't do that in the NFL,''' Spurrier says. "But the Dolphins said, 'Why not? Stop us and we'll find out.'''
Since the Patriots never did stop the Dolphins, it's tempting to ponder the possibilities. But while Sparano agrees there's plenty more the Dolphins can do with the Wildcat, they may have already done enough. Every future opponent must spend time preparing for it, taking time away from stopping plays that comprise a far greater percentage of the Dolphins' attack.
"Sometimes, even if they don't work, you can achieve what you want to achieve just from the standpoint of putting some thoughts into the opponents' minds," Cowher says of trick plays.
Florida State became so synonymous with gadget plays that former University of Miami coach Butch Davis admitted to Bobby Bowden that the Hurricanes studied 15 years of Seminoles tricks on tape before playing FSU. Wyche loved when coaches said there was "no sense" in studying film of the Bengals'offense because what they saw on Sunday never seemed to show up on the screen beforehand.
"The no-huddle buffaloed them for about five years," Wyche says. "Nobody was doing it but us for the first five years. Then we went to the Super Bowl and it got popular."
Post-season games are packed with trickery, and not just those out of desperation like the Tennessee Titans' Music City Miracle kickoff against Buffalo in 2000. Cowher called several gadget plays in the Steelers' Super Bowl title run in 2005-06, most notably a pass by Randle El to Hines Ward that went for a title-sealing touchdown.
Another notable Super Bowl trick came in 1987, when the New York Giants routed the Denver Broncos 39-20. A fake punt near midfield and a flea-flicker set up two Giants touchdowns. Coaching New York: Bill Parcells, the current Dolphins' executive vice president of football operations.
Of course, there is a risk. Because trick plays rely so heavily on matchups and the element of surprise, you never know how they'll turn out.
Wyche and Cowher agree that they rarely even ran them when they expected.
"You practice your base plays over and over and over against every combination," Wyche says. "And then you put in a 'special' play and you might run it three or four times — total — in practice.''
A few weeks might pass until repetitions and the situation make a coach comfortable in playing that card, possibly for the only time.
So no, they do not always work. The Washington Redskins showed that in 1985 when a pitch from running back John Riggins to QB Joe Theismann set up perhaps the most grotesque injury in NFL history, when Giants linebacker Lawrence Taylor shattered Theismann's leg on a sack.
Such unpredictability makes it uncanny that before the season, the Dolphins' marketing team filmed two trick-play-themed ads, which ran on the Internet and Comcast cable in Palm Beach. Now, "it looks like all the stars were aligning," says George Torres, the Dolphins' senior director of marketing and communications, who says a Wildcat spot is in the works.
The first ad featured kids reenacting Marino's fake spike and includes a cameo by Marino, who tells the QB, "Way to go, kid." The other ad is based on the hook and lateral in the '82 playoff game against the Chargers in which Don Strock passes to Duriel Harris, who pitches to Tony Nathan for a touchdown. When a group of kids insist it was the "hook and ladder," Strock phones coach Don Shula, who orders the kids to "give me a lap" for getting it wrong.
Even when trick plays seemingly work perfectly, it can be a mirage. Wyche says plenty of such plays produce results even when they aren't executed as planned. That's when a coach will "grab the quarterback and say, 'Don't say anything about that in the press conference. Just tell them it was a brilliant call,''' Wyche says.
The key to snookering a defense? "Not necessarily being fast, but smooth and fluid," Jon Dorenbos says.
Dorenbos is an authority not only because he's the long-snapper for the Philadelphia Eagles, but a magician since age 12 who regularly performs. Imagine what it was like during downtime at the Bills' training camp in 2004 when Dorenbos and Wyche were with the team.
"We'd mess around, showing a trick or two," Dorenbos says. "We'd use cards, coins, do things with pencils between meetings. . . . ''
Although Dorenbos hasn't concocted any sleight-of-hand plays, he's a fan of them: "Heck, yeah. A lot of times when a trick play is run and it succeeds, you sit back and say, 'Wow, that was the perfect call for the perfect opponent.'''
Hal Habib writes for The Palm Beach Post. E-mail:hhabib AT pbpost.com