Was Caldwell The Brains Behind Bears' Dazzling Trick Play?

By: Will Burchfield
@burchie_kid

The 1-4 Bears turned heads last week on Monday Night Football, pulling off what might be the best two-point conversion in NFL history.

As color commentator Jon Gruden gushed, "I gotta put that in my offense, I have not seen that play!" (Coming from a guy who's seen just about every play out there.) "Hand the ball to Jordan Howard, hand the ball to Zach Miller, pitch it to your rookie quarterback. Stay tuned!!"

Video of the play soon went viral, and people began wondering where it had come from, who invented it. There were rumblings that the originator was none other than Lions head coach Jim Caldwell.

Historically accurate, coach?

Caldwell smiled.

"Historically inaccurate," he said.

But he'd seen the play before. He'd even installed it in one of his old playbooks.

See, Caldwell was hired as the Buccaneers quarterbacks coach in 2001 after spending eight years as the head coach at Wake Forest. When he started his new job, he began sifting through the film from previous years, "and I saw where they had run that particular play," Caldwell said.

It was installed by Les Steckell, the Buccaneers offensive coordinator the year prior to Caldwell's hire. Steckell called it 'Heisman Six Sway.'

The play raised Caldwell's eyebrows -- "Thought it was pretty unique," he said -- so he filed it away in the back of his brain. When he was let go by the Buccaneers after the 2001 season (along with most of the coaching staff) and then hired by the Colts, he brought it up with Indianapolis' offensive coordinator Tom Moore.

"I say, 'Hey Tom, they got this pretty interesting play that if you just got to have it on a 2-point play, you might think of this.' And you have to know Tom. Tom's not one of those guys that ever thinks that you have to trick people to win, right? So he says to me, 'Jim, I think that's the kind of play that you run when you got a long-term contract. And mines not that long.' So, obviously," Caldwell said, "we didn't put it in there."

Maybe that was for the best. Moore, who had been the Colts' offensive coordinator since 1998, would keep his job through 2009. (He was honored with a lifetime achievement award as an NFL assistant coach in 2015.)

But Caldwell kept Heisman Six Sway in the mental archives. When the Ravens hired him as their offensive coordinator in 2012, he put it in the playbook. Unfortunately, he never got the chance to call it.

"We just didn't have the occasion to use it," he said. "But kudos to (the Bears). It's been around a couple times in the League and both times the exact same result, so it's a good play."

The originator, as far as Caldwell knows, is Steckel. Of course, he may have picked it up from someone else.

The irony?

Gruden was hired by the Buccaneers just a year after they fired Steckel. A play he saw for the first time on Monday night he nearly came across some 15 years ago.