This story’s headline image is a screen grab from the 0:38 mark in the second quarter, when Doug Pederson called a time out and showed Nick Foles the 4th down play he was going to run.

It was something they had apparently stashed in the playbook, waiting for the perfect time to use it.

And it went off without a hitch, a wildcat, reverse pitch to Trey Burton with Foles sneaking out the back door to catch a touchdown pass. A backup tight end throwing a Super Bowl touchdown pass to a backup quarterback.

Sports Illustrated’s Peter King wrote a phenomenal article about the play in question, with quotes from Pederson, offensive coordinator Frank Reich, and pretty much everyone involved in that sequence.

From the story:

Reich told me the kernel of the idea originated from an industrious Eagles quality-control coach, Press Taylor. Said Reich: “Press has this, what we call this vault of trick plays. It’s an immense vault, so every week we go into Press’s vault looking for plays.”

King goes on to explain how Pederson came to decide on calling the play, which they originally were going to use against Minnesota in the NFC Championship Game:

“We had a couple of options at that point, but then my eyes just kind of hit that play,” Pederson said. “I was thinking, ‘We keep talking about that play, and calling it in the second half of the game … but are we going to be in a situation like this, to put us up by two scores? There are certain plays that you spend time doing them, repping them, and you have no doubt they are going to work. Without a shadow of a doubt you know. I knew.”

All of the reps led to this:

And maybe the most important section is about practicing the play and keeping it secret from the lying and cheating New England Patriots:

The Super Bowl’s a big stage. The Eagles practiced the play in privacy back in Philadelphia—in fact, they thought they might use it against Minnesota but didn’t need it in the 38-7 NFC title win 15 days ago—but once they got to Minneapolis, they didn’t want to expose it to prying eyes of outsiders, a few of whom are at every practice. They ran it twice on Friday afternoon in a walk-through practice at their Mall of America hotel, the Radisson Blu, a five-minute walk from the Orange Julius, seven minutes from Shake Shack. On one of the attempts, Burton threw behind Foles, but the quarterback reached behind him and made a nice grab. Burton didn’t beg, but he asked Pederson stridently, “Can we run this?”

Finally, and I mentioned this in the takeaways post, but a lot of people were talking about how this play was illegal formation from the Eagles, who didn’t have six men on the line of scrimmage:

Correct, but Alshon Jeffery, the WR at the top of the screen, claims he checked with the official beforehand to make sure he was lined up properly:

“I’m on the ball,” Jeffery said. “I pointed. What are you talking about? Man, you know I checked with the ref!”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that the official understood the formation to be legal. He could have been confirming that Jeffery was not lined up ahead of the ball, which he obviously wasn’t. But whether it was an oversight or not, they let it go, and if Patriots fans are going to belly ache over that play after years of getting a ton of calls in their favor, then they need to fucking grow up.

Read the King story; it’s excellent.

And get the shirt right here: