When I was about fourteen or fifteen, and just becoming a football fan, I had Joe Montana's Sports Talk Football for the Sega Genesis. This was before Madden, and of course it wasn't a very good game. But I played a lot of it with my friends.
The game was notable for having the first voice play by play. Remember, this was the Sega Genesis, so it was pretty crappy. But it was still quite a novelty.
One day we discovered that the most effective scoring play in the entire game was a fake punt run to the left. Every single time it was an instant touchdown. You could just pass through the line like it's air.
The funniest thing though was that if you did this play on first down (why wait to score?), the crappy announcer said "On first down, and I CAN'T BELIEVE IT!"
It was so goddamn funny. In fact, when I started making music on my computer a couple years later in high school, one of the first things I sampled was the Sports Talk announcer saying that exact same thing, and then mixing it with music samples.
Sigh. Those were the days. 
Apparently, you can do the same thing with a fake field goal.
I definitely need to DL some sports titles on my Genesis Mini. Starting with the Mutant League titles.
Ha ha. Just like real football!
The only football game I played a significant amount of was NES Play Action Football at my friend's house. I had no idea what I was doing but my friend was very patient with me. Football rules still elude me. Too much going on. I remember seeing Tecmo Bowl a lot in arcades because it was a very wide cabinet that was two screens long!
I never played any football games like Tecmo Bowl. I wasn't interested in the sport back then. Was there an Atari football game? I might have played that.
Oh the announcer was a game changer for me. I was like hey he's talking. My go to play was the slants in the middle. Throw the slant, catch and spin and that was always good for a chunk of yards if not a touchdown. The fun part was that the college game was basically the same game but with college colors and no names.
Another fun hack/glitch was on one of the early Madden's where if you just spin, nobody could tackle you.
I loved those early Maddens. They should make a retro football game like that.
I had my first sports announcer in a video game experience with NBA Jam.
I love samples in music. When I had a four track recorder I used to do drum and bass tracks and then put in dialog from TV and film. "I can't believe it!" would be a great on to use.