Quote:
Originally Posted by JugglingReferee
OL let DL by, and two of them were right on the QB. Had to throw or risk being sacked. A sack by definition is a loss of yards.
|
But look at 7-3-2. The relevant provisions are all "The passer to conserve time..." and "The passer to conserve yardage..." What's material to this case is not whether a loss of yardage would've
occurred, but what the passer's
motiv'n was. The ball was not thrown to conserve either time or field position, but to
consume time. So I don't see intentional grounding.
Suppose it were an opposite kind of situation. Time for the half expires during the down before A1 throws an intentionally incomplete forward pass under conditions where it looks like team A would've liked another down. It would not in fact have conserved time, but the passer's purpose was to conserve time, so it's intentional grounding. I doubt anyone would care about the enforcement, because the period ends anyway, but that's what's meant by those "The passer to..." phrases: to outlaw certain passes on the basis of the passer's purpose, not the result.