Forward vs Backward Pass
 

Good save by someone on the crew (R or L ?) on a play where it looks like H ruled a backward pass and muff but was actually an incomplete forward pass. From a Texas HS game last night.

YouTube - PASS

The coach would have loved it had the D picked it up and run it back for a TD.. Think the official still calls it?
I would hope so!

Good call
 

for incomplete

As is usually the case, an official makes the call based on what he sees, not after weighing all the possibilities of what he thinks might happen after the fact. Those are considerations reserved for coaching.

Rule if uncertain:

If incomplete it was forward, if complete it was backwards, if beyond the line of scrimmage, good luck.

Our rule of thumb is it's always forward unless you KNOW it was backward.

I prefer Sonofanup's description is that if unsure and complete then backward and if unsure and incomplete then forward. This uses the least harm and benefit of doubt principles:

1. If unsure and complete you want to give the offense the benefit of doubt if they decide to then throw a forward pass.

2. If unsure and incomplete you want to give the offense the benefit of the doubt and not have a fumble as a result.

Can seems like a bit of a contradiction but given that we cannot always be sure about our rulings we need to do the least harm when we are not sure.

I guess that's ok if you want to give all the benefit of the doubt to one team over the other.

Well, that's great except what happens if one person doesn't know and blows it dead when another crew member is CERTAIN it's backwards.

You can always fix it like this crew did, but you can't undo what becomes an inadvertent whistle.

You have to remember that we are talking about cases in which we are not sure what the correct ruling is. In such cases, we try and use the principle of least harm or you could call it least difference.

If a player is near the sideline and we lose track of his feet for a instant we will not call him out of bounds unless we saw him touch out of bounds. In this case the least harm would be to give the benefit of the doubt to the runner.

If a player is near the goal line on a drive we will not award a TD unless we see the player break the plane. If we miss the breaking of the plane then we give the benefit of the doubt to the defense that the player did not break the plane.

If there is a potential block in the back but we missed seeing how the player got to that point then we will pass on throwing the flag and give the player the benefit of the doubt that there actions are legal.

There will be many examples of where we need to err one way or the other if we are not sure what happened. Some will favour the offense and some will favour the defense but I believe that we try to do the least harm with what we did not see or to put it another way, the least difference such as no foul, player still in bounds and no TD.

That is where eye contact and perhaps a signal with the other official is crucial. You should only blow these dead when NEITHER if you knows that it was backward.

It's definitiely something to cover and agree on during the pre-game discussion, but if one official believes a pass to be forward and blows it dead, it shouldn't matter how CERTAIN another official might belive that the pass was backwards. The simple solution is to immediately support your crew mates signal and repeat his incomplete pass signal.

Inadvertent whistle should never come into the equation.

It's just easier to officiate when they catch the ball and don't throw it again.

It was easier when the Fed permitted the 2nd forward pass. :D

My point is that one shouldn't take a guess. If nobody has knowledge, then that's another story. But I've seen one official punch back and another whistle the pass incomplete and the guy with the incomplete call hasn't always been right.