Hurdling

[Canned Heat]

Originally Posted by Eastshire

If a player who is running jumps over anything and lands on his feet and continues to run, short of doing a somersault in the air, I'm having a hard time seeing how he could lead with anything other than a foot or a knee.

Any way of leading with the upper body would put you seriously off-balance, making it difficult to keep your feet let alone continue running. Obviously it's difficult to know without seeing the play, but given he ran an additional 20 yards, I think it's very likely he had to have hurdled the player.

He literally "hurdled" the player and did have a lead leg in doing so. The B player, who looked to be a DB was in position and was hung out to dry but standing totally upright and the runner jumped and completely cleared the DB. I have yet to ever see a play where a ball carrier cleared any kind of height like that. It was like Walter Payton doing his famous leap over the D-line...except landing on his feet.