In last Saturday’s Redskins/Seahawks playoff game there was a penalty call I don’t understand. Specifically, about half way through the first quarter Washington on a punt was called for an “Illegal touch” and so it had to replay the punt after a 5 yard penalty. Seattle gained substantially from the penalty, as it would have taken over at the Seattle 24 but for the penalty, but after the re-punt and return it had the ball at the Washington 45.
Can someone explain the ref’s call to me? If I recall correctly, they said that the Redskins defenders coming down to cover the kick went out of bounds and then came back in to the field and downed the ball.
Secondly, if this is indeed against the rules, why? Rules are supposed to have a reason, and I don’t understand the reason for this rule.
Basically the field is laid out for a reason. It has certain dimensions. All play needs to occur within those boundries. Rules like this one and similar ones pretaining to receiver are mostly to prevent deception on the part of one team against the other. No one can leave the field and then pop up back in play. In this case the defender is not disallowed from being part of the play, he just can’t be the first player to touch the ball.
WAG - The Washington player left the field at one point, traveled outside of the field of play and then returned to the field of play to touch the ball. It was an illegal touch because he did not exit and re-enter the field of play at the exact same spot. His travel outside the field of play placed him at an advantage. Of course, if a teammate had touched the ball before he returned to the field of play, his touch (now a second touch) would not have been illegal.
This is because (before this rule was created) Pop Warner sent a receiver into the crowd and then back into the end zone, free of his defensive coverage. Very clever, but very quickly outlawed.
Nope once his toe goes out of bounds he can no longer be the one to touch the ball. I guess they could put in a rule that he could exit and reenter the field at the same spot be it would be impossible to enforce correctly. You go out of bounds you are out of play. In the case of a receiver you can no longer catch a ball for a compleation. On special teams then the rule in the OP applies.
ETA: Just a funfact. If you see a ref take his hat off and throw it on the ground it is for one of two reasons. Either he sees a penalty and he already threw his flag for another one he saw. The second reason is he saw someone go out of bounds during the play.
That’s exactly what happened. He wasn’t trying to touch the ball either; it just took a bounce and hit him. Not really his fault; just one of those things can happen on special teams.
That’s a pretty thin basis for a penalty, IMHO. The advantage a punt coverage player gains from going out of bounds on kick coverage seems pretty dubious.
Nitpick: a player who leaves the field can not be the first one to touch the ball. He can still catch a tipped ball (if it’s tipped after he returns to the field), recover a fumble, etc.
At what point does the punt coverage player gain an advantage? How do you judge that?
In theory, a gunner (the ends on the punt coverage team) could have an alleyway prepared by his teammates on the sideline and get down the field pretty fast.
Since we’re talking about this game I have another question that no one seems to know the answer to. I think it was in the 4th when the Skins kicked off, the ball bounced over the Seattle receiver, the Skins grabbed the ball and ran it into the end zone. They called the ball back because Seattle had not touched the ball, but then they gave the ball to the Skins.
At first we thought that Seattle had touched the ball, but doesn’t that count as a touchdown then? Then we thought that they were going to give it to Seattle where the Skins had touched the ball. I’ve asked a couple of different people but no one seems to understand what happened.
I think there is another thread on this question already. IIRC, you can’t advance the ball on a kickoff if the other team hasn’t touched it. You can recover, but not advance.
As i said in the other thread, you can’t even advance it if they have touched it. A kick is a kick and kicks can’t be advanced by the kicking team, and just touching it doesn’t change it from a kick. If it’s possessed, then fumbled, it’s not a kick any more, and the kicking team can advance it.
It’ll illegal for a blocker on the recieving team to block a player on the punting team while out of bounds. The advantage is an unobstructed path downfield. Also, without the rules intended to keep things in bounds, as Loach mentioned above, why bother having boundaries at all?
But it’s fairly common to have penalties for rather thin things, that didn’t really give much of an advantage – they are still rule violations, and called against the team.
An example from one of the last Minnesota Viking games – a fumble was recovered by Minnesota, which would have made a big difference in the game. But the other team challenged, saying there were 12 Minnesota players on the field. The replay showed there were – a Minnesota player had been replaced by a substitute, and he was running off the field. The other team started a play quickly (to make sure Minnesota couldn’t challenge the previous questionable call). He was all the way over on the other side of the field, about a step away from the sideline, and did not participate in the play at all.
But since he had not quite stepped off the field, the officials ruled that the Minnesota Vikings did have 12 players on the field. That’s another case where a ‘thin’ penalty definitely changed the rest of the game.
