The Holy Roller - What If?

[ilyazhito]

Originally Posted by Robert Goodman

Undoubtedly. The NFL had a choice of saying their officials goofed, see who your bookie wants to credit with the win; or acknowledging that was a legal play and in subsequent years altering the rules to make that sort of play specifically illegal. Why should it be different on 4th down from any other? Why should it be different in the last 2 minutes? Why only at the goal line? They just don't want to say they were intimidated by Al Davis. And then after the passage of time NCAA said, huh, why not adopt the same kind of rule just in case?

I agree. I understand why the 4th down fumble rule exists, to prevent teams from fumbling and then benefitting by recovering a fumble in advance of where they lost the ball. The reason why NCAA created a rule for 4th down and tries is because the rules committee thought that teams would resort to bizarre plays such as forward fumbles in desperation situations where they might feel unlikely to gain needed yardage by normal means. The Holy Roller was a result of the Raiders abusing the existing rules.

I wouldn't be surprised if a high school team tries the Holy Roller in a state championship game, because recovering a fumble ahead of the spot where the ball was lost isn't illegal at that level. However, I expect that officials will be on their guard and rule any movement of the ball forwards a pass. The jet sweep play often involves a forward shovel pass, so an underhanded forward pass should not be as surprising as it was in 1978. The subsequent components of the play (Banaszak batting the ball forward and Casper kicking the ball into the end zone) would be illegal in NFHS, so for a play like the Holy Roller to work in NFHS, a team would have to drop the ball so that it rolls forwards and have someone else pick up the ball.

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by ilyazhito

The jet sweep play often involves a forward shovel pass, so an underhanded forward pass should not be as surprising as it was in 1978.

Underhand forward passes were in substantial use long before then. Single wing playbooks commonly included one or more inside shovel or chest passes. And even in 1975 in the pros, the Cowboys used a couple of different such passes in their newly reinstalled shotgun system -- one flipped forward by a passer fading straight back, the other pitched forward to a trailing back by a passer faking a run around end. I don't think officials are looking for such passes any more or less these days.

In Fed rules, they do have slightly more reason to distinguish a forward pass from handing the ball forward since they limited the offense to one forward pass (but no limit on forward handoffs) per down in this century after about 60 years of not needing that distinction. But they don't have any more need than previously to distinguish it from a fumble.

And when it comes to the jet sweep, they do have a need to distinguish a forward from a backward pass in case it winds up on the ground. The reason a pass is used is that some teams want to take advantage of its becoming an incomplete pass and dead in case they drop it, which benefit they couldn't get if it were handed. But sometimes the pass is such a short distance that it's near impossible to tell whether it went forward or was just tossed straight up. If officials can't tell, are they favoring a ruling of forward pass or backward pass? On one hand, they like ruling balls dead. On the other, if the offense wants to take advantage by not handing the ball to a teammate, shouldn't they have to prove it's forward?