Rules RE: Declined Penalties

[JugglingReferee]

Originally Posted by pjerwin

SCENARIO: Team A is on offense on the 8 yard line. Play ensues and Team A makes a touchdown. Penalty flags fly. There are two penalties against Team A. Team B declines both penalties, the referee signals each penalty followed by Team B’s decision to decline. The game announcer in the press box duly reports the activity and adds, “…Team B declines both penalties, so the touchdown is good.”

QUESTION: What’s the proper ruling?

CANADIAN RULING:

Touchdown.

Declining a penalty means that your choice has been that the result of the play is more beneficial to you than the application of the penalty.

Since there are no cases in Canadian ball where B benefits from declining two A penalties where A scored a TD, I do wonder if there was a miscommunication somewhere along the line.

Hmmm.....

The only way that I can see there not being a touchdown is that if both fouls were pre-snap fouls, and the timing of the fouls was such that the officials didn't have time to kill the play prior to the snap, and decided to not do anything about it until after the snap, but still opted to give B the choice of applying at the PLS, without any benefit to A from the actual play.

Example: each WR mouths off to their respective sideline officials pre-snap and the official do not kill the play pre-snap. They flags come in during the play. These two fouls should be enforced at PLS, repeat the down. These are additive fouls, so B could decline the penalties, yet A would not be able to keep the TD, thereby "making" the announcer's statement incipiently incorrect.