Justin Jefferson performing the Griddy dance in a Minnesota Vikings uniform

Griddy

2017dance / catchphraseclassic

Published August 5, 2026

The Griddy is a dance move created by Louisiana high school football player Allen Davis in 2017, popularized as an NFL touchdown celebration by Justin Jefferson and Ja'Marr Chase. It exploded on TikTok and Fortnite between 2021 and 2022, turning a locker room bit into one of the biggest sports and gaming dance crossovers of the era.

dance memes nfl memes fortnite memes tiktok dance trends football memes

Overview

The Griddy is a short dance where you jog in place, swing your arms back and forth, and throw an "OK" sign over your eyes like goggles3. It looks simple on purpose, which is a big reason it traveled so easily from high school locker rooms to NFL end zones to Fortnite lobbies1.

The move is tied to Louisiana football culture and to two of the NFL's biggest young receivers, Ja'Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson, who turned it into their signature touchdown celebration between 2020 and 20221. By 2021, Fortnite had bought the move into the game as a paid emote, which locked in a second life for the dance among players who had never watched a football snap2.

Origin & Background

Platform
Snapchat / Instagram (source) → NFL & TikTok (viral spread)
Creator
Allen "Griddy" Davis
Date
2017

The Griddy was invented by Allen "Griddy" Davis, a Louisiana native who played football at Landry-Walker High School in New Orleans1. He first started doing the move in his school's locker room, where a teammate filmed him and posted it to Snapchat around 2017, and from there other New Orleans area high school players picked it up1.

Davis uploaded the earliest known compiled recording of the dance to his own YouTube channel on June 8th, 2018, using screen grabs of the original Snapchat stories, and later broke down the origin in a 2020 interview with YouTuber Norman Locke4. He also confirmed in a Houston local news interview that the dance is named after his personal nickname, "Griddy"1.

How It Spread

College football adopted the move first. LSU wide receiver Justin Jefferson hit the Griddy several times after touchdowns during the 2019 season, and Davis reposted the highlights to his own channel that December1. When Jefferson was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings in 2020, he brought the celebration with him and scored his first NFL touchdown on September 27th, 2020, walking into the end zone with a Griddy1.

The dance jumped genres that same month when NBA YoungBoy dropped "Right Foot Creep," a track whose hook became the unofficial Griddy anthem on TikTok1. On April 26th, 2021, the official Fortnite Twitter account announced the Griddy would hit the item shop two days later as an emote inspired by Jefferson2. A Fortnite music video pairing NFL skins with the emote to "Right Foot Creep" pulled roughly 4.5 million views within nine months1.

The Griddy hit peak virality during the 2022 NFL Playoffs, when Louisiana native Ja'Marr Chase and the Cincinnati Bengals ran to the Super Bowl. A Bengals TikTok of Chase talking about the Griddy on January 7th, 2022 pulled about 743,000 likes in a month1. Around the same time, TikTokers started using rapper Jx.Zero's song "Playboy" over clips of their Fortnite characters hitting the Griddy in response to a fake girlfriend saying she hates Fortnite1.

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How to Use This Meme

To hit the Griddy, jog in place while swinging your arms front to back, then form the "OK" hand sign with both hands and hold them over your eyes like goggles for a beat before dropping them and continuing the jog3. It's typically used as a celebration after a win, whether that's a touchdown, a game-winning play in Fortnite, or landing something in real life, and is often paired with "Right Foot Creep" or the phrase "hit the Griddy"3.

Frequently Asked Questions