The Fake Spike: How Dan Marino's memorable play ruined the 1994 Jets and still lives on today

Marvin Washington said he is still “mystified” by the effect the play had.

Paul Frase said he gets a “knot in his stomach” when reminded of it each year.

And Jeff Lageman accurately noted that “everything went south” afterward.

Each of the three former Jets defensive linemen recalled their memories of the “Fake Spike” — the infamous trick play that Dan Marino executed with 25 seconds left in the Dolphins’ 28-24 win over the Jets on Nov. 27, 1994, at Giants Stadium — in conversations with Newsday.

With Miami trailing 24-21, Marino clearly and repeatedly signaled that he was going to spike the ball. Instead, when the ball was snapped, he quickly dropped back and fired an 8-yard touchdown pass to Mark Ingram (who was covered by current Jets coach and then-rookie cornerback Aaron Glenn). The fake spike capped a meltdown for the Jets, who had led 24-6 late in the third quarter.

When the Jets and Dolphins resume their rivalry Sunday afternoon at MetLife Stadium, it will be 31 years and 10 days since the moment that sent the 1994 Jets into a tailspin. But who’s counting?

“It was a legitimate turning point,” Washington said. “And here’s the thing: That next time we came out for a practice, and I can remember our first drill, team drill, nobody said anything on defense. No one said anything on defense — no coach, no anything — and I just thought it should have been addressed differently.

“I think a couple days later, Ronnie Lott had printed out some stats to show that we were very much in the playoff race. We were very much alive, and it was just quiet that practice. It was quiet for the rest of the week. It was quiet during the game when we played the Patriots the next week.

“And that game just took the sails out of the organization.”

If the Jets had defeated the Dolphins that Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1994, the teams would have been tied for first place in the AFC East at 7-5 with four games remaining. They did not win another game. Pete Carroll was fired after only one year, and the Jets went 4-28 over the next two seasons under Rich Kotite.

“I was shocked that we did not win another game,” Frase said. “I could not understand that.”

Said Lageman: “I was surprised that nobody ever thought of [the fake spike] before it actually happened, now looking back. It seems like there’s never any stone unturned in the National Football League.”

One of the biggest misconceptions about the fake spike, Washington said, was that the Jets were totally fooled by the play. Washington, the left end, jumped and tried to get a hand on the pass. Frase, the left tackle, bull-rushed Marino. And, most notably, Glenn was in stride with Ingram.

“I remember talking to Ronnie Lott, and I think we had a couple of D-linemen that were down on a knee because we thought [the spike] was about to happen, and it just so happened that I saw something that just wasn’t right,” Glenn said in October. “I remember trying to run out there to go cover [Ingram] to try and defend the play.

“Listen, they did a really good job of getting us on that play.”

Said Lageman: “I don’t even think that Aaron was not prepared. I thought he played the route pretty well. Let’s say that there was no fake spike and he just ran a play, would the result have been any different? Because Aaron was ready to go, and that’s the only guy that really mattered.”

Frase, who NBC broadcaster Paul Maguire noted was “the only guy” that rushed Marino, estimated he was only 18 inches away from Marino’s hand when he released the ball.

“What really gets me is I could have been the hero that day,” Frase said. “But instead I was the goat, and it wasn’t a Tom Brady GOAT.”

Frase played out the remainder of the season with the Jets before being selected by the Jaguars in the 1995 expansion draft. But he did gain something from an otherwise negative memory.

Frase’s son, Joshua, battled a rare muscle disorder called myotubular myopathy and passed away at age 15 in 2010. The Joshua Frase Foundation was started in 1996 to support research for the disease. Frase’s role in the fake spike ultimately gave him a platform to promote the foundation, and he used a 30-second clip from the broadcast after receiving the OK from the NFL, the Jets, the Dolphins, Marino and Maguire.

“If anything came out of that good for me, it was that,” he said. “I get to tout that I was the unknown in one of the greatest plays in the history of the NFL.”

By Ben Dickson

benjamin.dickson@newsday.com@bendickson__

Ben Dickson is Newsday Sports' general assignment reporter. He joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins' teams.