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Originally Posted by ajmc
Sorry Robert, I respectfully disagree with your assessment. NF: 7.2.7 clearly suggests that it's a player's starting position that determines whether, or not, he has to meet the requirement for being 5 yards behind the line at the snap.
This concept is reinforced by the narrative in the "Points of Emphasis" regarding "Motion" where it speaks of a player who "started from a position not clearly behind the line of scrimmage and did not establish himself as a back by stopping for at least one full second".
To change from a back to a lineman a player must reset to establish that new position. The original example speaks of a player who clearly established himself as a back, and then went in motion as a back. By not re-setting (stopping for a second) he does not change his status to that of a lineman and is perfectly legal moving along his side of the scrimmage line. As long as he does not move forward, at the snap. he is legally in motion without satisfying the 5 yard requirement for a lineman to be legally in motion, because he did not establish himself as a lineman by resetting.
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You're "disagreeing" with something I did not take issue with, and had nothing to do with my assessment.
It doesn't matter whether the player was set as a back originally or after a shift;
at the snap, that player
still has to be in a legal position either in the backfield or on the line or in position (with nobody else in that position) to take a handed snap. If in the backfield, he can be in lateral or backward motion; otherwise, must be set for 1 sec. Because of the rules determining whether a player is in A's backfield, widely spread linemen combined with backfield motion close to the line can make for a difficult call, but it shouldn't matter much unless a team is taking advantage of the scrimmage kick formation exemption.
Robert