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Bootleg Call Brings Back Some Painful Memories

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By Joey Johnston/The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 28, 2007

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. - Bad call.

There's no other way to say it.

Well, except this:

Brutal call.

At Rentschler Field, of all places, where the South Florida Bulls' magical season came to die - again.

The Connecticut Huskies dismissed USF 22-15 on Saturday, even though the real story was the Bulls shooting themselves in the hoof.

USF simply needed a yard, a measly 36 inches. It needed a strong push from the offensive line. It needed Matt Grothe to burrow through the pile. And USF, with all the momentum, probably would have forced overtime on Saturday. UConn, after all, was back on its heels, going nowhere.

Instead, the Bulls inexplicably chose to get fancy.

They went wide. Grothe, from a wishbone formation, tried a naked bootleg. There was no fallback, no receiver in the pattern, no chance to dump it off if there was trouble. UConn defenders Cody Brown and Greg Robinson had it pegged, sniffing it out, staying at home, then sacking the desperately twisting Grothe for an 11-yard loss with one minute remaining.

On fourth-and-hopeless, Grothe's pass was incomplete.

Just like that, it was all gone - the top 10 ranking, the BCS bowl hopes, the national attention - all of it.

Leavitt Won't Second-Guess Call

As USF players trudged one-by-one into the locker room - some wiping away tears, some snarling with anger, others just sadly sleepwalking - Bulls offensive coordinator Greg Gregory found a folding chair. For a moment, he buried his head into his hands before joining the team.

When the door swung open, the glum-faced Gregory was first to emerge, hurrying up the ramp, not looking back to where UConn fans were still celebrating on the field.

The call?

'I thought it was the correct play in that situation,' Gregory said. 'That's what I called. UConn just made a play.'

USF coach Jim Leavitt was in no mood to second-guess Gregory's decision.

'I don't even want to go there,' Leavitt said. 'I don't want to go into that whole thing. When things work, I like them. When they don't work, I don't like them.'

It sounded eerily like 2005, when USF was driving toward a BCS bowl possibility, then lost at UConn 15-10. That's when USF's ill-fated 'Voodoo 5' play - a slow-developing double-reverse pass attempt called by then-Bulls offensive coordinator Rod Smith - developed into a crushing 13-yard loss on fourth down.

Game over.

Just like Saturday's call.

Game over.

'Sometimes, I guess history kind of repeats itself, huh?' said Robinson, UConn's redshirt freshman linebacker.

UConn Saw It Coming

Robinson - then a high-school senior in Scotland, Pa. - was not present for Voodoo 5. But he did see it on film - continually - last week.

And he said UConn was anticipating more potential USF trickery near the goal line.

'The phrase we heard all week was, 'Stay at home against Grothe. Stay at home,'' Robinson said.

On first-and-goal, Grothe rammed for a 4-yard gain to the UConn 1. But with Mike Ford injured, USF then sent Moise Plancher (who had carried only once this season) sweeping right for no gain.

Third down.

'Their trend was running away from me,' Robinson said. 'It's real easy to not stay at home and stick your neck in there near the goal line. We had to stay disciplined. We had seen that wishbone formation, and it was always a run.

'We practiced all these scenarios with Grothe rolling out. We were ready for it. I just had a feeling he was coming my way.'

The Bulls just needed a yard for the tying touchdown.

Then came the voodoo that they do at UConn.

What were they thinking? You wondered at Rutgers, when Grothe was placed in difficult situations against the Scarlet Knights' continuous blitz. Where were the screen passes? Where were the checkdown options?

And now another UConn meltdown - a cute call at exactly the wrong time.

'This is a tough one,' Gregory said. 'A real tough one.'

But it's also one we have seen before.

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