Troy Polamalu explains how he spoiled Pat McAfee's fake field goal in Pittsburgh homecoming game
In 2014, then-Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee returned home to Pittsburgh to take on the Steelers. That day, he and coach Chuck Pagano planned to run a play for the occasion: a fake field goal which would see McAfee run in a touchdown.
All was going as planned — until it wasn’t.
Troy Polamalu infamously snuffed it out and moved into position to break up the play. The result was a made field goal by Adam Vinatieri, and it became the subject of an all-time, NSFW rant from McAfee in 2021.
This week, Polamalu shared his side of the story during an appearance on All Things Covered with Bryant McFadden and Patrick Peterson. As it turns out, McAfee had a hard time hiding his emotions about the looming play call.
“You know what,” Polamalu said. “I saw him too excited on the sidelines.”
Polamalu also said luck played a role in the play. He and special teams coordinator Danny White talked about changing up part of the formation, but never did. For some reason, Polamalu decided to move into the C-Gap on that play, taking away McAfee’s shining moment in his hometown.
“The funny thing about it is we actually had a bad tendency if I was blocking to the field,” Polamalu said. “100% field goal block tendency was if we were on field goal block there on the hash, we were always going to run into the field. And then, after being on a hash, that was on pretty much a guaranteed made field goal, our special teams coach at the time was like, ‘Hey, man, we just need to change up our tendency just once.’
“I just remember us having that conversation before we went out there and was like, ‘Alright, maybe this is the time to change it.’ I wish I would’ve played some lottery numbers with that guess. We lucked out, for sure.”
The clip made its way across Twitter — and onto McAfee’s timeline. He tweeted his reaction to the revelation right before his show went on the air.
Warning: This clip contains NSFW language.
McAfee has talked extensively about the play on his show before, and he even had Steelers coach Mike Tomlin on to talk about it. But now, he knows how Polamalu actually managed to get in the way of the play he said was a “sure thing” to score a touchdown.
The Colts ended up losing that game 51-34.