Would the touchdown in The Dark Knight Rises count?

The Game Room
1

Anyone who’s seen the trailer will know what I’m talking about, so I didn’t use spoiler tags here.

During the events of The Dark Knight Rises, Hines Ward has a kickoff return for a touchdown, and as he’s running, the field starts imploding behind him. He manages to outrun it and score, and then he turns around to survey the damage.

A silly question popped into my head after the scene: “Would the touchdown still count?” Would there be an official NFL rule that would cover this particular scenario? I mean, of course the game would be postponed or even canceled due to an unusable playing surface, not to mention the presumed death of a vast majority of the players involved, but I’m just curious, in a macabre sort of way.

2

Since this is about football rules, let’s move this to the Game Room.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

3

Here are theNFL rules concerning emergenciesthat cause a game to be interrupted or suspended.

It seems as if, under these rules, the game would be continued on some subsequent day. Whether or not the individual play would count would apparently be up to the NFL Commissioner or other official.

4

I would hope there would be some rule that if an explosion, tornado, runaway truck on the field, sniper fire, or some other external cause disaster happened in the middle of a play, that play would be null and void. Or maybe you could appeal to the upstairs video judges to determine whether any of the exploded players could have legitimately changed the result of the play - if not , it counts.

Seriously though, if the team is unable to continue, with most of the players being put out of commission, wouldn’t the game be cancelled? (Subject to replay if necessary to determine playoff position).

5

I believe the official rule is that if a significant number of players die during a game, the remaining players face off in a gladiatorial deathmatch with a kill being worth a field goal and a beheading worth a touchdown.

6

Woe be to the 12th man on the field.

7

I don’t believe there were any referees left alive on the field to blow the whistle and signal a touchdown. So no points.

8

This is an excellent point and correct. I just re-watched it to confirm, and no official is around to signal touchdown in the first place. So if anything, the Rogues would need to throw the flag for a video review before a touchdown could be ruled, and before that can happen someone’s gonna have to retrieve it from the bottom of the pit that used to be the football field.

9

If you’re one of the remaining players on the visiting team (offense mostly left alive), how would you feel about being held hostage in Gotham for months when you thought it’d be a quick Away game?