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I have seen the replay several times since Saturday of the Illinois player who recovered a fumble but thought it was an incomplete pass and tossed it on the ground where his teammate picked it up and ran it in for a touchdown. Everyone has been getting a real good laugh about the play, but I bet the Referee was not laughing after the game when he had to explain why he allowed the play to continue.
Fumble call was fine and the recovery was fine. However, when the player threw the ball down on the ground, that would constitute an illegal forward pass by the defense. Since it hit the ground, the pass was incomplete. Therefore, it should have been the defense's ball at that spot (minus the 5 yards for the illegal forward pass penalty).
This just proves that on the weird plays that we have to take our time and sort the situation out. Even if the R allows the team to take the ball to the endzone before he figures out that the score was not merited, he could bring the ball back. The rest of the crew could have also helped on this play, if they were in a position to see what happened.
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