NFL Network forgets greatest trick play in Vikings history

NFL Network put together a compilation of the three best trick plays in Vikings history, but they forgot the best one of all.

Quick Vikings fans, name the greatest trick play in team history.

If your mind immediately went to Randy Moss’ lateral to Moe Williams, then you are a Vikings fan from pretty far back.

And you are qualified to put together a compilation video of the greatest trick plays in team history. At least you are according to NFL Network.

If however you are a true-blue dyed-in-the-wool real Vikings fan from a long way back, there’s probably another play that leaps to mind even ahead of Moss’ memorable scoop to Williams.

I take you back to 1980 and possibly the single greatest regular-season game in Vikings history. Minnesota is trailing the Browns late with time running out and need a miracle to get themselves even close to scoring range.

They get a miracle in the form of this beautifully-designed and -executed hook-and-lateral from Joe Senser to Ted Brown.

Note how Minnesota fakes out the Browns by lining up three receivers to the right, then having Tommy Kramer throw left to Senser.

Not only was this play a thing of beauty, it led directly to the Hail Mary pass from Kramer to Ahmad Rashad that won the game.

Now you tell me: as great as Moss’ lateral to Moe Williams was, how is that a greater play than the one that set up arguably the single-greatest play in team history?

You could actually argue that Moss’ lateral doesn’t even count as a trick play since it was clearly improvised by Moss. For a play to truly be a trick play, doesn’t it have to be designed to deceive the defense?

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The other two plays in the NFL Network compilation – a Moss option pass for a touchdown and a Ryan Longwell TD pass off a fake field goal – are nice plays but no one with any historical perspective thinks they should be above the Senser-to-Brown miracle hook-and-lateral that made Ahmad Rashad’s one-handed Hail Mary catch possible.

Come on NFL Network people. Do some research. Go back in the books a little farther. Figure out that football didn’t begin in 1995.