[The Ref of OZ!!!]

The White Hat is right, its the rules that matter. But the rules use the words "Impede," and "Interfere". Both of those are verbs that infere an action. Since there was no "Action" by B to "Impede" or "Interfere", there was no foul. Simply being in the way is not an action that would cause a foul in this instance.

If an A player is laying on the ground, and a B player in an attempt to get to the ball carrier trips over the A player's legs, are you going to flag the A player for triping? Only if in your judgement he tried to trip the B player, if he has move his legs in some way to make the B player trip. The same logic would be used to flag the Defender in the pass play.

It was the Reciever's actions that caused the collision. It was also the QB's inacuracy that led to the Reciever's actions. What you want is to penalize the defense for the QB's poor throw. That doesn't make sense.

[Edited by The Ref of OZ!!! on Dec 14th, 2002 at 12:58 PM]