The Best Football Strategy I Have Never Seen

I must admit that I heard this idea on local sports radio today, so this is not an original idea. It is, however, one I have never seen attempted at the end of a football game.

Here is the scenario (which actually played out at the end of the Tennessee-Kentucky game last Saturday night) - an offensive team is down 3 points with the ball and enough time to run one offensive play before trying a field goal.

Here is the strategy - the defense puts 13 players on the field and tackles every receiver as soon as the ball is snapped.

Why? The penalties will move the ball closer to the goal (though only one can be enforced) and the game cannot end with a defensive penalty. What good does this do?

Here you go - you have now forced the opposing coach to kick the field goal and go to overtime. Even with the yardage, the coach is rarely going to risk losing the game when a field goal forces overtime. If he tries to run another offensive play, the clock might expire (since time ran off the clock during the penalized play). You have forced his hand - he will have to kick the field goal for the tie.

Let's go back to the UT/UK game. Kentucky had 8 seconds (which, by the way, is an excellent Luke Perry movie) to run one quick play from the two-yard line before having to attempt a field goal. What if the Vols had put 13 guys out there to defend it and tackled everyone? The penalty would be half the distance to the goal, so now it is on the one-yard line. Is Rich Brooks going to try another play from the one or settle for the field goal?

With the exception of a few coaches, most are going to take overtime in that situation. Fulmer could have forced Brooks' hand by purposefully committing a penalty to prevent a score on that last offensive play. It is similar to fouling in basketball before a three-point attempt and forcing the team to make a free throw, miss the next, rebound it and score it to tie.

There is not much honor in bending/cheating the rules this way, but wins are wins.

Is there a problem with this strategy I'm missing?