Crap Tactic: What Would You Do?

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by LDUB

The R player ran right between two K players, who were running down the field, to get to the kicker who was just standing there. If R was really trying to prevent K from getting to the ball carrier wouldn't it make more sense to block someone running towards the ball rather than someone just standing there?

I understand that people might disagree on whether this is flagrant or not, but it is obvious that this is more that just a standard block.

That was exactly the argument I made almost 30 yrs. ago for calling UR on some plays like that even when there was no specific rule violation. It was in the Northern States Football League, which played their own rules, and only the NCAA had a roughing-the-kicker rule that applied to free kicks, and even that was very recent. The Chi. Lions were sending three R players running at the kicker on every kickoff, which obviously hurt their blocking on the runback. Once one of them tried to clothesline the kicker. I asked the officials afterward whether they could've called this UR on general principles because it was clearly done to injure or intimidate the kicker rather than to improve the runback. They said, barring a specific rule like NCAA's, no.

Sending someone running at the kicker like that was a common tactic at the time (since specialty kickers who weren't built like football players had become common), but sending 3 made it pretty obvious, yet officials are loathe to make that kind of judgement. So I'm not surprised that few would now want to bump up the PF to a disqualifying foul. It's like, well now that there's a specific rule against it, the prescribed penalty takes care of it.

Robert