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Interesting. IIRC the Canadian rules refer not to "grounding" but an "intentional incomplete pass". I don't remember, and don't have handy enough to bother, whether the wording of any of the USAn rules require the pass to be incomplete to be penalized, though I suspect so.
But let's just look at the incentives. If a player of the defense tips the ball, that would seem to satisfy the intention of the rule that the passing team put the ball up for grabs. If the defense "saves" an incompletion and it turns out to be complete by the passing team, doesn't it seem that the defense took their chances by tipping the ball as they would with a pass directed anywhere, and therefore that they should not be able to benefit by an intentional grounding call? We already have the anomalous situation in USAn rules of a ball's being tipped by the defense as making players of A eligible to receive a forward pass who would not have been eligible otherwise, so it would seem the rules makers are willing to have the opponents of the passing team be able to "save" the passing team from certain balls that would've been incomplete, so why not also from an intentional grounding penalty?
Robert
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