I didn’t here the anouncers mention a couple of rules issues …
What about the rule that if a player would have come down in bounds but gets pushed out he’s in bounds. The announcers didn’t mention that at all on the last TD.
Nor did they mention the first almost touchdown where the lineman pulled the ball carrier over the goal line. Didn’t think you could do that…am I wrong?
The first rule has been removed. If you catch the ball and come down out of bounds, you are out of bounds - no matter what the defensive did.
As for the lineman thing - as long as the ball carry is not down, he can be push pulled or carried into the endzone.
Thanks… at least I wasn’t totally nuts.
When did the inbounds rule change?
I think they just changed it at the beginning of this season.
I it is an infraction to “aid (or help) the runner.” The first time I heard of the rule was when it was called in a high school game ~'60.
Rarely called, but it is there.
As Spike said, this is not correct. According to the rules, the ball carrier can’t be pulled, pushed, or otherwise aided.
However, in practice, several times per game an offensive lineman will end up behind the runner and push the pile forward, and a penalty is never called. It’s very rare to see a runner being pulled, as opposed to pushed, though.
Apparently the refs really didn’t like this rule since it was so much of a judgment call.
The “helping runner” rule is there so that (among other things) you don’t have one player tossing a smaller player over the line to score/get the 1st down.
But that would be so cool! Football teams could have one 50 pound guy just for that purpose.
the anti-allyoop rule has been around for a while. leather helmut days. in the long ago early days of football you could indeed “allyoop” a teammate over the pile at the goal line.
after the anti rule the player must toss/propel himself over the pile up or whatever is in his way.
In this photo of the '67 Ice Bowl game, #30 (Chuck Mercein) has his hands up, not to signal the touchdown, but to show to the ref that he didn’t push Bart Starr into the end zone on the quarterback sneak.
Cite?
In the spirit of obscure football rules: what exactly, is “crawling?” Yep, it is a violation, but I cannot find a definition. It is a five-yard penalty.
http://www.football.com/old-images/rulesabc/imgs/ref-crawling.gif
I think it’s scooting when you’re under the pile, trying to pull one over on the refs. In football, I’ve never seen it called. In rugby, the defensive team enforces it.
Moving to The Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Think I saw him say that in an NFL films documentary, but here it is in print…
Quick thinking for a Yale man. 
I noticed in the interception/touchdown run just before half-time, that the guy who eventually tackled the runner just at the goal line had gone out of bounds, and then came back in bounds to tackle the runner. In fact, I thought he ran along the sideline in the white sideline area for a while – at least several steps – before he came back in bounds.
So am I correct in thinking that the yard-wide white area at the side is outside the bounds? And if so, how can a player come back inbounds and make a play? I thought that if you went out of bounds, you were not allowed to come back inbounds & participate in the play anymore.
Yes, the white area is out of bounds. You are allowed to reestablish yourself on the field of play and quickly as possible and still participate in a tackle. The most common player out-of-bounds rule is that they can’t be the first person to touch a live ball. In this case, I’m not sure if Harrison had fumbled right before the goal line and the once out-of-bounds player recovered if that would have been flagged as illegal or if enough time elapsed to re-establish “inboundness”.
