The official call for the weirdest play in NFL history is an extended series of names and letters — a mishmash of shorthand terms from the West Coast offense, a piece of esoteric football code — and, amazingly, Steve Bono can remember every word.
Green right tight close, F left, fake 13 blast, quarterback keep right, Joe V. cutoff
The first part, Bono explains, was the formation. The fake was designed for running back Marcus Allen. And the Joe V. cutoff? Well, that was a special wrinkle involving Joe Valerio, an offensive lineman who’d line up as a tight end in short-yardage situations. But here’s the funny thing about this play: Bono, the former quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs (among other teams), is reciting the call from memory on a Tuesday morning in September. But come to think of it, he says, he doesn’t even remember calling the play in the huddle.
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It’s been 25 years, enough time for the specifics to fade. But in his memory, it went something like this: In the moments before the weirdest play in history, he wandered over to the sideline, where Chiefs head coach Marty Schottenheimer was waiting for him with a sly, mischievous grin.
“No better time,” Schottenheimer said.
It was Oct. 1, 1995 — exactly 25 years ago — and the 3-1 Chiefs, one of the best football teams in the AFC, were on the road at Sun Devil Stadium in Arizona. It was the end of the first quarter, and the Chiefs had a 3rd-and-1 from their own 24-yard line.
No better time.
Bono jogged back to the huddle, looked at his teammates, and this is where his memory is a little fuzzy. The call, as Bono says, was a “game-plan play,” specifically designed for the Cardinals’ aggressive defense. But he doesn’t remember saying the words. He just remembers smiling.
Green right tight close, F left, fake 13 blast, quarterback keep right, Joe V. cutoff
Before they broke the huddle, there was one more thing.
“Guys,” Bono said. “I’m taking it to the house.”
OK, full disclosure: We are only 325 words into the story and we have already declared, without any qualifiers or couching, that this story is about the weirdest play in NFL history. This is a bold statement. Obviously. There have been millions of plays in the history of the league. Some have been very strange. Some have been described as miraculous. There is nothing inherently weird or miraculous about a fake blast and a quarterback bootleg on 3rd-and-short.
But here’s the thing: It wasn’t the formation or scheme or the design of the play that made it the weirdest in NFL history. It was what happened next. It was Steve Bono, a pocket passer with the foot speed of a right tackle, faking a handoff and taking a bootleg 76 yards for a touchdown. It was the cartoonish stack of bodies — the entirety of the Cardinals’ defense — piled up like a car crash on the stadium grass. It was the image of Bono and Valerio, his lead blocker and body man, jogging together down the field, no defender in sight, no other human in the frame, the entire stadium (and even the broadcasters) eternally faked out.
Steve Bono played 14 years in the @NFL and ran for just 257 yards.
Maybe that's why not a single Cardinal defender anticipated this QB bootleg, which accounted for over one-quarter of Bono's career rushing yards.
(Oct. 1, 1995) @Chiefs #AZvsKC pic.twitter.com/ZG4Dbqj7LG
— NFL Throwback (@nflthrowback) November 7, 2018
“Unreal,” Chiefs offensive coordinator Paul Hackett would say.
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“It was so weird,” Bono says. “Looking back, I don’t think I realized how open I was.”
“It looked like people from the bench were diving into the middle of the pile,” Valerio says. “I assumed that (then-Cardinals coach) Buddy Ryan was in the middle of the pile. Because the whole stadium thought we were running the ball up the middle.”
The play has become so indelible in Chiefs lore that when I reached out to Bono recently to see if we could chat before its 25th anniversary, he responded, via text, “happy to talk about ‘The Run.’”
It was so ridiculous, so unlikely and bizarre, that I can still remember where I was when it happened. Nine years old. Playing a fall-league baseball game at the 3&2 Baseball Club complex in the Kansas City suburbs. The complex manager comes on the loudspeaker to update the Chiefs score, as was the custom.
“The Chiefs lead 7-0 in the second quarter after a 76-yard run from Steve Bono,” he says. One of my coaches, Mr. Wheeler, turns to the dugout: “I think he meant pass.”
Of course he meant pass. Bono was in his first season as the Chiefs starting quarterback and not exactly known for his legs. He was 6-feet-4, classic build, an archetypal West Coast game manager. He’d rushed for more than 20 yards on a single play just once in his career. In his first nine rushes of the 1995 season, he amassed seven yards. He was 33 years old, too, thus a few steps slower than he was in his early 20s, when he played catcher for the UCLA baseball team and once ran a 4.79 40-yard dash, a personal best.
“Not fast,” Bono says.
That was fine. The Chiefs had acquired Bono for his arm. Then in his 11th season in the NFL, he had spent five years as a backup in San Francisco, learning behind the franchise’s stars, Joe Montana and Steve Young. In 1994, he followed Montana to Kansas City, spending another season as a backup. And then, when Montana retired after the 1994 season, Bono finally had his chance, a starting job for a Kansas City franchise that had been in the AFC playoffs five straight years.
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In the age of Patrick Mahomes, it’s easy to forget the Chiefs’ place in the NFL of the 1990s, during the golden age of Martyball. Purveyors of smash-mouth football — think powerful running backs with gigantic shoulder pads — and owners of a ferocious defense, the Chiefs had taken over Kansas City in the most authentic way. The Arrowhead Stadium parking lot was the biggest tailgate in the world. The stadium was deafening. The offense had evolved into a West Coast operation with Montana arriving in town for the 1993 season. The same year, the Chiefs also signed Marcus Allen, the future Hall of Fame running back, which ratcheted up the hype to another level. When the team convened for training camp in River Falls, Wis., thousands of fans poured into the small college town. Valerio remembers offensive line coach Alex Gibbs pulling his unit together for a brief message: “Boys,” he said. “They ain’t here to see you.”
This @SInow NFL preview cover from 1996 a gem (Steve Bono ftw). #Patriots ended up being AFC champs, #Chiefs 9-7. pic.twitter.com/wWymK6qbAE
— Tim Whelan Jr. (@thattimwhelan) January 15, 2016
The Chiefs made the AFC Championship Game in 1993, lost in the wild-card round in 1994 and entered the ’95 season with Bono at quarterback and the best defense in the NFL. They opened the season with three victories in their first four games. In Week 5, they would travel to Arizona, where they’d face the Cardinals and head coach Buddy Ryan. The architect of the 46 defense and one of the most aggressive defensive minds in league history, Ryan was sure to pack the box, bring pressure and force the action at the line of scrimmage.
To neutralize the Cardinals’ all-out style, the Chiefs had a trick up their sleeve. Noticing something on film, Bono says, Hackett had installed a simple bootleg with a small wrinkle.
Joe V. cutoff
“It worked every time we practiced it,” Bono says. “A lot of times against the scout team, the scout team kind of knows what the play is. But it seemed to work every time.”
Here were the basics: The Chiefs would line up Allen in the backfield with fullback Tony Richardson in front of him. Another fullback, Kimble Anders, would be sent in motion. There were no receivers, just two tight ends flanking the offensive line. It was pure football. One of those tight ends was Valerio, a reserve lineman who had approached cult-hero status after hauling in three touchdown passes from Montana the previous two years. Valerio was supposed to hold his block, to make it look like a run, before releasing into the flat. Once there, he could block a safety or offer a receiving option to Bono as he rolled right on a bootleg.
That was the plan, anyway. The reality was different.
“There was nobody there,” Valerio says.
The play before the weirdest play in NFL history was a handoff to Marcus Allen that went for 3 yards on 2nd-and-4. Neither team had scored yet in Arizona. As the final seconds of the first quarter ticked off the clock, Bono made his walk over to Schottenheimer. As NFL coaches go, Schottenheimer could emote like few others. His locker-room speeches were classics of the genre, the perfect soundtrack for NFL Films. His sideline presence was legendary: hat and glasses, his call sheet tucked into his pants, his voice barking orders.
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He was not above a little levity, however, so as Bono jogged back onto the field, Schottenheimer offered a final reminder: “Don’t pull a hamstring.”
Bono was not worried about pulling a hamstring. But as he broke the huddle and approached the line of scrimmage, he was concerned about the whereabouts of Cardinals safety Terry Hoage, who was the key to the play. In short-yardage situations, Bono says, the Cardinals would go with six down linemen, four linebackers then Hoage, a veteran defensive back. In the event that Hoage was not sucked in by the fake, Hackett had designated Valerio to block him. After all, they needed just one yard. But as Bono prepared to go under center, he noticed that Hoage had run off, replaced by yet another linebacker. It was at that moment, he says, that he knew: They had ’em.
As Bono took the snap, he faked the dive to Allen, who plowed forward behind the blocking Richardson. At the same moment, Arizona’s Seth Joyner, the defender on the edge, came crashing down the line of scrimmage in pursuit from the back side. (“I was locked in on the dive play,” he would say.) That left nobody on the outside, and a million bodies in the trenches. As Bono carried out the fake, he retreated to the 17-yard line, wheeled toward the outside and … nobody. The field was empty, except for Valerio, running out in space.
“The funniest thing is watching it on a television replay,” Bono says, “when there are literally 20 guys in a pile and two guys out in space by themselves.”
The replay is still stunning, even 25 years later. Bono takes off, all by himself. Valerio stops and waves him by. By the time they pass the 50-yard line, there is no defender within 20 yards.
“It was almost like it was made-up,” Valerio says. “It was scripted and directed.”
At one point during the run, Valerio said, Bono yelled ahead, asking him to slow down. Allen joked that they could have called two timeouts during the run. Some teammates said that they clocked the run with an hourglass.
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“I did say to Bono on the sidelines, ‘Don’t pull a hamstring.’” Schottenheimer told reporters after the game. “At the rate of speed he was running, I didn’t think there was any danger of it.”
The touchdown run was the longest by a quarterback in NFL history. It would be eclipsed by Pittsburgh’s Kordell Stewart the next year. But it would be another 16 years before another quarterback (Robert Griffin III) would score on a touchdown run of at least 76 yards.
This Day in #Chiefs History (1995): Steve Bono runs for what at the time was the longest QB run in history (76 yds). pic.twitter.com/tCulYE8b4l
— Pete Sweeney (@pgsween) October 1, 2014
But it wasn’t just the yardage that made the play a unicorn. In 2019, the SB Nation series “Dorktown,” hosted by Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein, launched a deep investigation into the play. The series described Bono as “a man who ran like a tranquilized turtle wearing ankle weights.” But more important, it found that no NFL player had ever spent as much time alone on screen while finishing a run. Bono, Bois said, “got his own TV show at his own 25-yard line.” Nothing in history has ever come close.
“The fake was so good, I thought (the) officials might blow an inadvertent whistle,” Schottenheimer would say.
Twenty-five years later, Bono can remember crossing the goal line, looking around and still feeling alone. He dropped the ball in the end zone and headed back to the sideline. There was no social media or internet memes in 1995, but the play did go viral in its own way. It became a staple on SportsCenter. Sports Illustrated profiled Bono and mentioned it. In time, it became a local legend. If 65 Toss Power Trap and 2-3 Jet Chip Wasp are the two most famous plays in Chiefs history, then the Bono run is the weirdest. Last year, Bono says, he relived the play by watching the 20-minute Dorktown episode. The breakdown was interesting, he said. The replay made him smile once more.
“Other than being the tranquilized turtle,” he said, “I think everything else was pretty good.”
It’s a Tuesday morning in September, and Bono has been on the phone for close to 20 minutes. The 76-yard run was the longest of his career and a quirk of football. But if you dig a little deeper, it actually explains his ’95 season. In most material ways, it was the best year of his career. It was the only season he started 16 games. He threw 21 of his 62 career touchdown passes. The Chiefs finished 13-3 and earned the No. 1 seed in the AFC playoffs.
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“Great season,” he says. “Biggest regret.”
The regret would come during a 10-7 home loss to the Colts in the divisional round of the playoffs, a painful loss marked by three missed field goals by Lin Elliot and three Bono interceptions. It was, for decades, among the worst losses in franchise history. When I reached out to Bono, I did not anticipate to find a connection between the 76-yard run and the playoff loss that followed. But as Bono told the story behind the famous bootleg, he mentioned the unpredictable nature of “game-plan plays,” those plays installed for a specific defense.
The bootleg had come on a game-plan play, and it seemed perfect. But so, too, had all three of his interceptions against the Colts. It was a play designed for the Colts. It wasn’t successful. “All three were basically on the same play,” he said. “It didn’t work because I didn’t execute it.”
The design of a play can be flawless, the concept can be well conceived. But the play still must be executed properly, and sometimes that doesn’t matter, either. Sometimes it’s on the defense. Sometimes the opponent bites on a fake, dives into a pile and coaches look like geniuses.
“We could have gotten hit for a 3-yard loss and looked like fools,” Schottenheimer would say.
We may never see another play like Joe V. cutoff — a slow-footed pocket passer running all alone for 76 yards. To Bono himself, the highlight remains so strange. The weirdest play ever wasn’t even that complicated or innovative. It was just a very simple football play.
“All I remember seeing was Joe Valerio standing out there, going backward, waving his hands like: ‘Come on, Bones, get out here,’” Bono says. “I guess the rest is history.”
(Top photo: Orlin Wagner / Associated Press)
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