Quote:
Originally Posted by JRutledge
When I look at it again, he does not immediately release the ball. He is snapping it like someone is going to catch it. So it is certainly not fluid. And if you look other lineman, they move and the ball is not released. I was more looking at this from a procedural point of view at first by wondering if something other than just the snap was at issue. Because if he was releasing this like someone was under center, I would agree. But this was a shotgun formation, he should have released the ball sooner. But I am not an NFL official, so I am just guessing. They have a different level of scrutiny.
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That would be interesting if it's true. If you're snapping hand-to-hands, there is that instant where the snapper has slapped the ball into a quarterback's hands and both at once have at least one hand on it. That's why the snapper knew he'd goofed in this case, because he didn't feel that resistance. But then why wouldn't a hand-to-hands snap always be an infraction for that reason? Wouldn't that mean the motion of the ball ceases
during the snap in a hand-to-hands snap, making its motion discontinuous?
Since nothing about the wording of the rule makes any provision for the motion of the ball being different depending on whether the snap is thrown thru the air or handed to the receiver, why would it be illegal for the snapper to move it exactly the same way for both? It just says, "The ball must leave or be taken from his hands during this motion." It even seems superfluous to say "or be taken from", since how could it be taken from his hands without leaving them? If the officials are to say the same motion that's continuous if someone's hands are there to receive the ball is discontinuous if the snapper just drops it, then that looks like it's just a get-out-of-jail-free card for them.
Anyway, the fact that the ball landed more than a yard behind his butt tells me it must have still been moving backward when it left the snapper's hand. It's not like the snapper reached so far under his butt that he could then throw the ball forward at his butt and have it bounce back; it got all that backward momentum from the snapping motion. The snapper relied on the quarterback's hands being there to stop it. So I don't think any stoppage of the motion could have occurred while it was still on the snapper's hand.
On top of that, about a decade ago, the NFL removed the old "false start" provision about extension of hands specifically so there wouldn't be a repeat of what happened in the Dolphins game where the QB had his hands under center, the snapper missed his hands completely, the ball wound up on the ground behind the quarterback, and the ball was ruled retroactively dead as a false start by the QB. But if the ball also remains dead under the circumstances of the play in the clip here, then nothing has changed, because if the QB's hands aren't where the ball winds up and don't at least touch it, it's not been put in play, and the rule change accomplished nothing!