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.