The 6th Best Play of the 2023 USF Football Season
We must be very wise by now.
After a brief break for men’s basketball’s conference title and NIT runs, our countdown of the top ten plays of the Bulls’ 2023 football season continues just as spring practice is starting to heat up.
If you missed any of the previous entries, you can find them linked below:
Honorable Mentions
#10: Golesh and Byrum Send a Message
#9: Nay’Quan Wright, Angry Bowling Ball
#8: Nay’Quan Flips the Script
#7: Dae Day
Play #6: Surprise!
Count me as one of the many viewers who were very underwhelmed by late-seasons Game of Thrones, but there’s one quality back-and-forth from its penultimate season that Play #6 brought to mind:
If one does indeed believe, as Jaime Lannister did, that there are lessons to be learned from every failure, then USF football has an absolute treasure trove of wisdom to sift through from the past few seasons. And perhaps no lesson felt more humiliating than the FAU game this past year, where the Owls ruined the Bulls’ homecoming game to the tune of an embarrassing 56-14 beatdown. To be clear: USF went 4-2 after that game and improved pretty substantially, so our general take on the FAU fiasco is simply “progress isn’t linear; next.” Still, it didn’t make it any more fun to experience in the moment.
In particular, there was one play from that game that I suspect stuck in the craw for a few Bulls fans. Having just scored to go up 56-14 with 6:44 left to go in the game, Tom Herman elected to try a surprise onside kick because…. I am not terribly sure. Grrrrr, rivalry, or making a statement, or maybe just that onside kicks are fun, or something. I don’t know. Ask Tom Herman. Anyway, the Owls recovered and they seemed to very much enjoy the experience, which is very nice for them.
Hopefully, USF fans didn’t think much more about this play after the game was over. But it seems like Alex Golesh didn’t forget about it. In the Bulls’ last game of the season against Charlotte - which they needed to win to secure bowl eligibility - the Bulls raced out to an early lead, but Charlotte was threatening to sneak back into the game in the second half. After the teams traded touchdowns to start the third quarter, the Bulls added a field goal to go up 31-14. It was still a substantial lead, but the 49ers had broken serve, and were about to get the ball back with a chance to make the Bulls fanbase a little nervous.
At least, that was the plan. Instead, Golesh pulled out a little tribute to Herman, and we got our Play #6:
There are four things about this play that I absolutely love.
First: it’s the FAU play! I would call Golesh’s response to the Owls’ surprise onside kick perfectly businesslike. He didn’t make a big fuss about sHoWiNg SoMe ClAsS or running up the score or anything like that, like some coaches might do in that situation. When asked about it at the postgame presser, he just said: “Is what it is. I’m cool. We’ll get ours at some point.” Turns out that they got theirs five games later, with a bowl game on the line, using the same play to perfection to pull away from the Niners and ensure a return to the postseason.*
Second: it’s really not an exaggeration to say that this play ensured a return to the postseason. USF scored a touchdown just four plays after recovering the surprise onside, and outscored Charlotte 17-0 the rest of the way. It’s difficult to pin down one play as the play that clinched bowl eligibility for the Bulls when we’re analyzing a 48-14 blowout, but this play has as good an argument as any. And when the bowl bid is the Bulls’ first postseason appearance since 2018, the play that clinched it is a pretty special one.
Third: I love the message that this play sent. This wasn’t a throwaway play at the end of the game; the outcome of this one was still very much in the balance. But we’ve talked at length about Alex Golesh’s approach to the 2023 season: he was consistently aggressive and opportunistic, always looking for a way to land a knockout punch. To that end, he went for it on fourth down at a higher rate than almost any other coach in the country (see: our Play #10), and he often called plays as if his hair was on fire (see: our Play #7).
But this kick was a bit different than those plays. Unlike, say, the fourth down attempts against Bama, I’m not praising it because it was a statistically wise move. In fact, I’m not sure there’s ever an objectively right time to call a surprise onside kick; the chances of recovering one are just never going to look good on a spreadsheet. This was just a pure vibes move. Most people would not see a 17-point lead in the third quarter of a must-win game as a time to start reaching into the ol’ bag of tricks and risk giving up a short field. But sometimes, even the most analytically inclined coaches have to crumple the worksheets into a little ball, toss ‘em in the trash, and say hey, we can basically end this game right now if we nudge this ball forward a few yards, have everyone run like the dickens towards it, and pick it up before the other team does. And voila! It was just such a fitting way to put a bow on Golesh’s first regular season: bold, exciting, and a little bit unhinged. After years of watching USF football coaches come up short in big moments again and again and again and again, there was something so deeply cathartic about seeing Golesh simply reach out and grab the brass ring with both hands instead of politely waiting for it to fall into his lap.
And finally: football is a immensely complicated game with schemes and tactics that many of us armchair quarterbacks will never fully comprehend. But on rare, beautiful instances, it can all be boiled down to AHHHHHHHHH THERE ARE ELEVEN LARGE MEN RUNNING FULL SPEED DIRECTLY AT MY FACE AHHHHHHHHHH
Players 5 and 40 for Charlotte are experiencing such a moment on this play, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, they are not able to recover the football. Having eleven large men run full speed directly at your problems is often a good way to solve them.
*it should be noted that FAU went 1-5 after their demolition of USF, comfortably missing a bowl game at 4-8. And then USF beat them in men’s basketball to steal the conference title from under their noses. But FAU did recover a very cool onside kick. (Look, I did a rivalry! I’m going to go take a shower now. 2007-era me would be horrified.)