Dead ball fouls
 

Question: What if a wing man reports that he has 2 dead ball personal fouls, but when asked, he doesn't know the order in which they occured. How should this be handled? :eek:

Canadian Ruling
 

CANADIAN RULING:

PF = UR.

Order doesn't matter. They wash if one on each team, and concatenate if on same team.

If you don't know the order, they offset.

I have a hard time accepting that the same official can flag two offenses and not know what happened first. Ask him to describe what he saw. Hopefully he'll say, "I saw A, B and C."

The order of occurrence could be relevant if you're inside the 30 yard line.

I think usually if the same official had both flags, he would know the order. The only time we've had this is when two different officials had dead ball fouls and nobody knew the order of occurance. I think that has only happened once or twice in my career and it helped me learn this rule (offset if you don't know the order).

The original post talked about two personal fouls. A later post referred to two flags. Let me give two situations:

There is a big pile and two players come out pushing and shoving. You adjudge the contact to be a personal foul on both players. Do you throw two flags?

Two players are nose-to-nose at the end of the play. As you move to seperate them, A commits a personal foul and B retaliates. Do you throw two flags?

Great questions. I'm not sure if there is anything in the mechanics manual that speaks to this. I doubt it would be covered in the rule book. I had one a couple weeks ago where the retaliation was after I threw my first flag so I had a second one. Not sure what I would do if they were that close together.

And relevant when it comes to A getting new series if you judge that B fouled first.

If they are that close together, I wouldn't worry about 2 flags, just getting it right.

Also, if you have and USC fouls make sure you record the numbers of the players because the 2nd one on anyone is ejection. I have a spot on my game card for USC players.

This is where common sense and a sense of fairness need to override verbiage. The issue is primarily relevant when the action involves the ball being inside someone's 30 yard line.

When there are two distinct, separate DBFs, assessing the sequence may be appropriate. However, when there are separate actions as part of the same incident and penalized together as an offset, it's purely a judgment call if you believe the actions are connected, or if they are serious enough to be considered separate and should be penalized in sequence.

Understand, if you're inside the 30 YL and penalize in sequence one team may be getting a totally unearned advantage, or disadvantage.

I would suggest, even when the result of application of the penalties produces an offset, each penalty be individually signaled and walked off, bringing you back to the starting point to emphasize that each penalty has been applied and counts for something.

From a PR standpoint, 2 flags would communicate to all that you indeed have two fouls as opposed to one flag and one foul. Just a thought.