End of Game, Nose Swats at Snap

[AndrewMcCarthy]

Originally posted by Warrenkicker
We had a player at a varsity game earlier this season come over and ask us about swatting the ball out of the snapper's hands on a long snap. This long snapper would load-up on his snap and thus really wasn't a legal snap as he would pick the ball up slightly and move it forward a little before his backward motion. We said that nothing stopped him from trying as long as he didn't encroach.

They never tried to slap the ball so we didn't have to rule on if we should have had a dead-ball foul or just a loose ball. So I would say that when a player is able to knock the ball out of the snapper's hands that it is a legal play by the defense but can be an illegal snap if it didn't meet all of those requirements.

We had the exact same thing happen to us last week except it was the coach who asked us in the pregame. Our R said he didn't see how it would be illegal. The snapper "loaded up" on the first long snap of the game and the nose slapped at it- the ball rolled back to the punter and he was ambushed.

The K coach wasn't too happy about it but subsequent snaps were much quicker.