Five non-lethal video game moves that have already made it to football

It’s theme week at SB Nation, and this time we’re headed for the virtual world: video games. Over the course of the week, Pats Pulpit and the other blogs in the network are devoted to the best and the bizarre when it comes to gaming. We’ll continue the series today by looking at how video games and football are connected.

The nice thing about video games is that for a time you can experience powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men or at least super buff, heavily armed mortal men. It’s an escape from reality to another time, another place, another life lived, and more often than not, a place where you can open a whole world of pain on the folks that piss you off.

Most video games offer some sort of retribution, but some video game moves are so over the top they would instantly kill humans or in some cases small nations if unleashed in the real world. For the purpose of this exercise, I am not looking for the most lethal moves. I’m looking for those moves which while non-lethal could be very useful in the game of football. Little did I realize when I started, they were already there.

In asking for opinions, Bernd Buchmasser came up with this classic Yoshi move from Super Smash Bros 64. Yoshi swallows an opponent, and turns them into an egg. The opponent DOES incur some damage — to their pride — because they’re an egg and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.

Wait! Swallowing an opponent, and coughing up an egg-shaped object? That was Vince Wilfork’s shtick. Way to go, Yoshi, I mean, Vince! In this case, there’s more than someone’s pride getting hurt. Ooof!

Speaking of Super Smash Bros. 64, which is a classically awesome video game, ALL moves in the game are not inherently lethal. Some do more harm than others, but until your damage total gets up there, none of them are a killer. Matthew Rewinski’s favorite is Captain Falcon’s Falcon Punch.

Demonstrated here in Super Slow Motion, by Rob Gronkowski. Ooops. While punching happens in every NFL play, doing it away from the line of scrimmage might draw that pesky flag. Surely there’s a way to get around that.

A game that seemed quite familiar to me from the start was Skyrim. I never knew quite why until I was wandering around in there one day, and came across this sign:

One of the most interesting video game concepts is the Skyrim shout. Dragons aren’t actually breathing fire on you; they’re yelling at you ... with, um, really bad breath. Of all the shouts in Skyrim, my fallback is a gem called Unrelenting Force, AKA the Fus Ro Dah shout. It’s especially good against giants, and I can think of at least a couple games where we could have used some help against Giants. Just saying. You basically just yell Fus Ro Dah, and monsters, people, and things in general go flying. “Pushing? Hey ref, I didn’t even touch him....”

On the right side here, we see Rob Gronkowski do a little Fus Ro Dah action on Terrell Suggs. Considering the ground Suggs covered, he was definitely hit with a little unrelenting force. No flag. Can you imagine a running back armed with Fus Ro Dah? Linemen? We don’t need no stinking linemen!

Another assault to your pride is Jigglypuff’s Sing demonstrated here in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Jiggly sings, the opponent falls asleep, and is subject to all sorts of humiliation. It’s forced narcolepsy for people who aren’t narcoleptic.

Now what would happen if someone on the defensive line had a lovely singing voice. A round or two of “Jiggly Puff! Jiggly. Jigglypuff!” and you have this. “False start offense ... for the tenth time today!”

Have you ever been stuck in traffic? It happens all the time on the football field. Wouldn’t it be nice to use Nightcrawler’s teleport power, AKA the BAMF! Why BAMF? When they first started drawing him in the comic books, that’s the onomatopoeia they used for the sound of his teleportion. Also he’s a Bad A__ Mother F_____. So there’s that.

Remember Danny Woodhead? Smallish running back that would disappear into a large mass of humanity around the line of scrimmage, and while you look away to start writing his epitaph

Here lies poor Danny,

squashed quite flat,

by several large humans,

I would never call fat.

, he’d reappear 20 yards down the field.

Using special Pats Pulpit video analysis technology, we’ve proven that Danny Woodhead was indeed using the BAMF power. Of course he was also a Bad A__ Mother F_____. Watch carefully.

So there you have it. Five video game powers that have made it to the football field and not one of them is yet in Madden.

Originally I was going to have six powers listed, and the last was going to be Bill Belichick’s Jedi mind trick, but then I suddenly realized that Bill Belichick HAS NO Jedi mind trick. Move along. Move along.