Stunt (football)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A stunt in American football and Canadian football is a planned maneuver by a pair of players of the defensive team by which they exchange roles, the better to slip past blockers of the offensive team at the beginning of a play from scrimmage.
In one form of stunt, a line player, who would otherwise try to charge forward, instead drops back, and a nearby linebacker or defensive back charges forward instead.
The other form of stunt is called cross-rushing, in which line players, instead of charging straight ahead, cross paths. One of them may follow a looping path that goes behind the other before moving forward (in which case the stunt is called a "loop"), or one may wait for the other to penetrate slightly first, and then cross behind, their paths angling across each other. Some forms of loop will have a rushing player run around more than one rushing teammate.
Because of the exchange of roles, a stunt is sometimes called a "trade"; blockers of the offensive team may engage in similar "trades". The defensive players involved are said to be stunting or trading, or sometimes to "have a game on".
The purpose of a stunt is to confuse opposing blockers, which is an aid to the defense in rushing an opposing forward pass or kick. The main weakness of a stunt is that it is more vulnerable than average to running plays by the opposing team. In most cases, the defense will not use a play incorporating stunting if they expect a running play from the offense.
Presumably the word "stunt" here derives from its more general meaning of a showy trick. Its first use in the football sense goes back at least to the 1960s. However, the maneuver itself goes back to the 19th century. Walter Camp wrote of role exchanges between a line player and a "line-half" (then the nomenclature for what is now called a linebacker; presumably a cross between lineman and halfback, or a halfback playing behind the line; cf. "scrum-half" in rugby) in efforts to block a kick from scrimmage, forward passes not yet having been legal.
