Watching my alma mater Ga Tech play NC State this afternoon, I should saw a rule that I think is wrong. GT was on offense and had 3rd and 3 yds from about the NC State 5 yard line. GT runs a play, and the defense is offsides. Penalty is 1/2 the distance to the goal line.
Half the distance does not make a first down. GT runs two plays, NC State holds them and then takes over on downs.
I realize that defensive offsides is not an automatic first down, but I think if the full five yard penalty would normally get the offense a first down, it should be a first down. Obviously it does not.
What is to stop the defense on the goal line to continually anticipate the snap count on a goal line stance if offsides never gives the offense a first down?
One issue with this strategy is that, when the defense is offsides, it’s essentially a “free play” for the offense. If they have a bad play (incomplete pass, loss of yardage, or, worst of all, a turnover), they can always just accept the penalty, and the bad play doesn’t count (the down will be played over, at half the distance to the goal line).
Yes, it’s true that the offense will never get a first down, but it doesn’t matter…as long as the defense keeps jumping offsides, the offense can just keep running play after play until they get a touchdown (or a first down, if it’s not “goal to go”).
Correct. The one’s who claim that a team can’t get a first down in the OP’s scenario are incorrectly thinking that the penalty will be marked off half the distance to the* first-down marker*, but it’s marked off half the distance to the goal line, which, of course, is independent of the first-down marker.
I’m very clear on the fact that “half the distance” is marked to the goal line, not to the first-down marker. I suspect that the OP “gets it”, too; his post was more about “why don’t they award a first down if the normal yardage for the penalty would give a first down?”
However, the OP muddied the waters, when, in his last sentence, he asked:
The situation in the first few sentences of the OP, in which the offense could get a first down at the 2 yard line, was not, at least, in my mind) not a “goal line stand”. Thus, the last sentence in the OP struck me as a different, hypothetical, question.
This sounded (at least to me) like a different, hypothetical situation.
I think the meta-answer is that if it were (or became) a problem, they could change the rules for the following season.
An analogous situation happened a few years ago in college football. Someone here will remember better than I, but it involved the kicking team fouling during the kickoff, and the receiving team not having the option to decline, so the kicking team could run time off the clock by continually fouling and accepting the penalty.
I’m remembering Joe Paterno getting upset when a team did this to him (near the end of the first half, IIRC, to keep his team from getting a chance to score at the end of the half).
Pretty sure that was the rule for only a single season.