Thoughts of officals on the A11 offense.

[Rich]

Originally Posted by Robert Goodman

First of all, there's nothing about it that prevents a defender's shooting up the middle. He just can't hit the snapper on the way.

But second, did it ever occur to you that there could be other reasons to line up in that formation? And that when the snapper does snap the ball deep, it doesn't matter in terms of his exposure what type of play it's going to be?

I certainly do understand this.

However, I also have seen teams trying to get a cheap automatic first down by exploiting this rule. QB backs up a bit deeper than usual (about 7 yds instead of the usual shotgun 5) and then want the auto first down when the center is blocked. It's not about safety for them -- those coaches WANT the center to get drilled so they can go from 3rd and long to 1st and 10. And I'm not playing that game. In my judgment in those situations, it's just short of seven, coach, sorry.

I've only seen it 3-4 times since Roughing the Snapper was put into the rules, but each time the emphasis wasn't on safety, it was an attempted "gotcha" moment.