Fair Catch & Punt Return

[Ed Hickland]

Originally Posted by l3will

The way I saw it in the clip is that he did get his arm fully extended and waved it at least once.
...
The crew blew this play, hopefully none of our crews will make the same mistake.

Valid or invalid fair catch signal is the minor part... by the way K acted and the way R initially acted they all knew that some sort of signal had been given.
R heard no whistle obviously so he took off for the end zone.

Wonder what have happened in this same play if the receiver had tossed the ball towards the BJ, like a lot of receivers do when they make a fair catch?????

Art. 3... A valid fair-catch signal is the extending and lateral waving of one arm, at full arm’s length above the head, by any member of the receiving team

"Laterally waving" means back and forth and that did not happen here. One swipe does not comply.

Yes, the covering official blew it. There was enough of a signal, valid or invalid, to blow the play dead once it was caught.

The problem becomes as the R what do you do?

With no whistle the R did the correct thing and let the play go, how could he see what happened.

After the play it is conference time. From what was observed in the video an invalid fair catch signal was the infraction which should have been blown dead. Contact by K occurred because the assumption was the play was still alive, no infraction.

[Backjudge79]

I got invalid signal, ball is dead. On the clip the referee dose a poor job of getting to the goal line also.