Winding and stopping clock

[mbyron]

Originally Posted by phansen

On the Minnesota officials website, they gave an example of an official winding the clock before stopping it after a first down. They told us not to do it anymore. I don't exactly know their reasoning...

Ohio now has the same mechanic. Once the line to gain has been reached, the covering official should stop the clock whether the runner is inbounds or out. The rationale is to preserve time on the game clock: rather than winding and then stopping, which might run off another couple seconds, kill it immediately to move the chains.

Communicating that the runner was inbounds is a separate step among the crew, and there's plenty of time to manage that later.