No one saw it!

[prosec34]

First of all, I would never be yelling to anyone that I didn't see what happened. You can communicate to your partners without letting the coaches and fans hear you.

As a wing, you have to set up close to the nearest end on this play, and come in hard if it's going up the middle. Hopefully one of the wings gets a clear look. Sometimes they don't, despite their best efforts. That's when it's the umpires duty to extrapolate what occurred. We had a play like this last week in a varsity game, where both of us wings were blocked out. When everyone unpiled, most of the ballcarrier's upper body as well as the ball were in the endzone. Our umpire promptly ruled touchdown. I would note that he knew to take over the call without either of us wings saying a word. After all, we hadn't blown the ball dead, we hadn't shown a spot, and we hadn't ruled touchdown. There's no yelling required for him to know it's his call to make, and if he has to guess, so be it.

The bottom line is the wings need to hustle and do their job, but the umpire has to be ready to make a quick call if we don't.