At a high school football game last night, the visiting team dropped back to field a punt on fourth down. After signaling for a fair catch, another player from the receiving team came up and made the catch ( the player that called for the fair catch didn't catch it); then he started advancing the ball. After the play was dead, the officials called a 15 yard penalty on the play but didn't specify what the exact call was. Was this the correct call?

Josh

Josh, we have no way of knowing if the call was correct or not, since you don't know what they called. What was the signal? Where was the foul walked off from? You haven't given us enough info. All I can tell you is that the ball was dead as soon as R caught it.

You need to re-read the post. K didn't catch the ball.

No idea where shave-tail is going, but when any team-R player signals for a fair catch and a different team-R player catches the ball, it's NOT a fair catch but the ball DOES becomes dead when caught.

The officials should have killed the play after the catch and since the other team-R player took off running assess a 5-yard delay foul at the spot of the catch.

Not enough information given as to why there was a dead-ball 15 yard penalty. That could have been correct.

I simply miss read the question. I thought the kicking team caught the ball.

Theisey, I agree the ball is dead when any R player possesses the ball after another signals FC, I would not call a DOG unless he continues running well after we hammer down on the whistle. Remember, he was looking at the ball and did not know a teammate signaled FC. I think we should give him a little bit of slack, as we would if a player didn't know his knee touched on a close one, so he ran a few yards, but did stop on the whistle. I am not saying I would never have a flag, just that I would give him a chance as he is not expecting the play to be immediately dead.

We also don't know from the description that a whistle was blown, or when.

As you guys know the rule book spells out the penalty enforcements at the end of articles in bold letters, separated by semi-colons. I had a disagreement with an official and pointed out that if you don't look at the semi-colons carefully you can botch this.

"Blocking after giving a valid or invalid signal (Art. 1) - (S40) - 15 yards;delay of game (Art. 5) - (S21) 5 yards;kick-catching interference (Art. 6) - (S33) - 15 yards."

He read this as delay of game being 15 yards. It was similar to the posted case except the player who caught the ball and gave the signal advanced.

It's clear to me it's only 5 yards and I explained why it's not 15. When I pointed it out and basically parsed the enforcements he then understood.

I agree with everyone that there is not info in the original post to know what was called. But as a pure guess, R (the one giving the signal) may have blocked after giving a fair catch signal. That would explain 15 verses 5 for a delay.

rule 6-5-5 no receiver shall advance the ball after a valid or invalid fair catch signal. Penalty is delay-of- game, five yards marked off from the catch. First and ten for R

REPLY: Technically that's true, but as a practical matter, the BJ or other covering official needs to be sure that the receiver caught the ball before blowing the whistle to kill the play. As a result, the R player who fielded the kick might very well begin to take off, not knowing that a teammate had signalled. As MJT said, he better stop quickly after hearing the whistle, but there's no reason whatsoever to throw the flag after his first step or two.