If there's a pile at the goal line, I'm almost certainly digging for the ball, and I'll let someone else give the touchdown signal once I find the ball and figure out who has possession.

I won't have a TD signal on a free-kick touchdown, since MN still uses to old 5-man free kick mechanics (I start at the 20 on L's sideline).

There's only one scenario where I would signal a TD as an umpire, although this is just a MN thing... MN puts the umpire in the offensive backfield on punt plays. If the ball is snapped from outside the 5 and inside the 15 or so, if there's a bad snap or a blocked kick. The way my crew has decided to handle those is to have the Umpire (me) cover the goal line and have the R cover the end line.

Inside the 5, the wing officials have the goal line on a punt, although I might still have a touchdown signal if R recovers the ball in my immediate vicinity. Hasn't happened to me yet though.


Back to the actual topic of this thread:

I'm never calling DPI because there's never a situation where I'm going to see the whole play AND be the only one who sees the whole play. I'm never calling OPI either... if one of my linemen is blocking downfield, I'll throw a flag for that; if H, L, or B wants to come up and tell me that blocking action should be OPI instead, so be it.

As for "discrete signals"... discrete signals don't stay discrete for long. Remember how the umpire used to do the "hand to the chest" signal to alert the wings to signal a touchdown on a goal-line pileup?

My thought was more that the timing on it wouldn't work. By the time the signal is given and another official processes it, the flag is going to be so late that nobody will feel good about it including the crew. It was just a thought based on the exact situation of signaling a wing on a TD that you mentioned. I was just curious if it was a tool that was out there that I'd never heard about.