illegal forward pass
 

eagles giants game. manning was called for an illegal forward pass. this was challenged and overturned. al michaels quoted a rule that stated that all parts of the passers body must have crossed the line of scrimmage when the ball is thrown for it to be illegal. replay showed that manning's heel was on the line when he released the ball. the ball and the rest of his body was well past the line. is this the correct rule?? is this a newer rule. i thought it might be the location of his feet or the ball. i'm not a football official, so please help. is there a rule citation ? thanks.

That is the correct rule in the NFL. The NF, NCAA, and NFL are slightly different for IPF's.

thanks. i found a 2006 rule book which had this rule. was the rule ever defined any differently in the past?? i seen this called and rev'd several times in the past and don't recall ever hearing the rule cited. thx

I'm not sure how the NFL rule is written, but the NCAA rule changed this year to the passer must be completely beyond the line to be illegal.

As for NFHS rules, the standard is quite a bit more restrictive than either NFL or NCAA. Case Book 7.5.1 explains, "It is an illegal forward pass because the location of the passer's foremost foot was beyond the neutral zone.".

in this case it is named by nfl line of scrimmage but ncaa say neutral zone.

where and why is there a difference?

REPLY: It's really just a case of semantics. In football there are two lines of scrimmage, one passing through each point of the ball when it's set for play. The roughly 11.5 inches between the two lines of scrimmage is referred to as the neutral zone. The Federation and the NCAA use the word "neutral zone" as the point of reference for determining whether or not the passer threw the pass legally. They could just as easily have used the phrase "defensive line of scrimmage" and gotten the same result. I'm not sure what the NFL use of the phrase "line of scrimmage" means. It may mean either the offensive line of scrimmage (making their rule more restrictive than the Fed or NCAA rules) or they might mean the defensive line of scrimmage (which would be the same point of reference as both the Fed and NCAA use today.

NFL & Fed inherited their rules from NCAA and so share the term "neutral zone", which goes back to the first decade of the 20th Century. To avoid the locution "beyond team B's line" (or "in advance of team B's line"), which would leave unclear from which team's perspective "beyond" would mean, they refer to the neutral zone in the rules on these provisions, which avoid mention of team B. I still wish they'd write "on team X's side of" instead of "beyond" and "behind", to be really clear.

The only difference in terminology here arises from playing "telephone" thru a sports reporter instead of quoting the rule book.

Robert