Splash Play

I couldn’t find an official definition of this, but it seems to mean a “big play” in NFL football.

Are there specific definitions of what a “big play” is? All I could find were various opinions:

• It was most often used to refer to defense – a defensive splash play might be a sack, an interception, or a tackle for a loss
• On offense, a splash play might be a gain of 20 yards or more
• On special teams, might be a blocked punt or field goal

Again, there’s nothing official here. I suspect this term came out of fantasy football leagues, which assign some point value to these play results.

I did find an article on a Steelers fan site which says:

“Splash plays” for the purpose of this statistic are sacks, interceptions, passes defensed, forced fumbles and fumble recoveries. Simply put, good things happen when a defense does these things, and when a defense does these things, good things happen.

But, again, this is idiosyncratic to this particular article and fan.