How to Use fall guy in a Sentence

fall guy

noun
  • His lawyers will argue that he was set up as a fall guy for crimes he had no part in.
  • Brown looked like the obvious fall guy when things fell apart.
    — Andrew Sharp, SI.com, 6 Mar. 2018
  • The steroid era did not even produce a fall guy within the sport.
    — Bill Shaikin, Los Angeles Times, 25 Jan. 2022
  • Sneader failed to set up a fall guy and therefore had to take the fall himself.
    — George Bradt, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2021
  • Love was a fall guy when he was called out during a Cavs team meeting last month.
    — Alysha Tsuji, For The Win, 16 Feb. 2018
  • Which makes Ten Hag an invaluable fall guy.
    — Sebastian Stafford-Bloor, New York Times, 31 Oct. 2025
  • Brown could end up being the fall guy even if there are legit reasons beyond his control.
    — Jeff Zillgitt, USA TODAY, 28 Feb. 2020
  • Meanwhile, is this yet another year of making the batting coach the fall guy?
    — San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 Aug. 2019
  • Change agents that do survive their change either lead an evolutionary change or have a fall guy.
    — George Bradt, Forbes, 25 Feb. 2021
  • Maybe Jason Garrett shouldn't have been the fall guy after all.
    — Lorenzo Reyes, USA TODAY, 5 Oct. 2020
  • He was sacked just two months after his first official game in charge and made the fall guy for the club's poor performances.
    — Matias Grez, CNN, 21 Aug. 2020
  • Explain why, and how, in your view, the hunting guide, Theo Bronkhorst, became the fall guy.
    — National Geographic, 28 Apr. 2018
  • And Jim being the husband … and that's being the typical fall guy, the husband must have done it.
    — Erin Moriarty, CBS News, 25 Feb. 2023
  • Mays, who now holds the lowest military rank of E1, should not be able to ask the court to view him as the fall guy, Jones said.
    — Megan Rose, ProPublica, 23 Sep. 2022
  • The fall guy may be coordinator Gus Bradley, whose defense has wasted those leads.
    — Nick Canepa Columnist, San Diego Union-Tribune, 7 Nov. 2020
  • But sometimes in sports, someone loses their job for a bad performance on the biggest stage and perhaps Brown will be the fall guy.
    — Jamie Samuelsen, Detroit Free Press, 2 Dec. 2019
  • Watching England as a non-white person can come with the fear that with many of the national team’s historic defeats comes a fall guy.
    — Carl Anka, The Athletic, 8 July 2024
  • Royce Simmons is another fall guy who discovered the magic of autumn cat fishing many moons ago.
    — Matt Williams, Dallas News, 21 Nov. 2020
  • But if there is going to be a fall guy for what transpired in the conference finals, Atkinson is a candidate.
    — Joe Vardon, New York Times, 26 May 2026
  • When Judas hangs himself in the chamber of tableaux, the fall guy becomes a static and perennial object of hate.
    — Dominic Green, WSJ, 12 Sep. 2022
  • Tucker agrees to become the fall guy in a setup, thus providing himself with an alibi for a likely murder rap.
    — Jeff Calder, ajc, 21 July 2021
  • In real life, Miller takes the ribbing well, happy to be his friend’s fall guy for the purposes of narrative structure.
    — Jack Crosbie, Rolling Stone, 7 Apr. 2026
  • Yet experts within the aviation community have long seen Forkner as a fall guy.
    — Dallas News, 28 Mar. 2022
  • As Beth and Dean deal with the aftermath of Dean’s arrest, the ladies have to find another fall guy to take his place.
    — Washington Post, 20 Mar. 2021
  • But the public criticism doesn’t necessarily mean Putin has settled on a fall guy.
    — Yuliya Talmazan, NBC News, 7 Oct. 2022
  • Not officially, maybe, but canned for using players on the roster given him — by Preller, who can play many roles except fall guy.
    — Nick Canepa, San Diego Union-Tribune, 28 Oct. 2023
  • One suspects that his problem with plutocracy isn’t its existence, but that membership in it didn’t save him when a fall guy was needed.
    — Laura Kipnis, The Atlantic, 10 Nov. 2022
  • Jimmy at this point in Saul does not know that Nacho is dead, and may have just hung onto him as an easy fall guy for future cartel shenanigans.
    — Alan Sepinwall, Rolling Stone, 12 July 2022
  • Officials in Wuhan are the most obvious fall guys for the crisis, and several have already offered to resign.
    — James Griffiths, CNN, 5 Feb. 2020
  • Michael Littlejohn is a fall guy who put himself through college guiding catfish and crappie trips at Cedar Creek.
    — Matt Williams, Dallas News, 21 Nov. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'fall guy.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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