weird play

[bcl1127]

One of my fellow officials and I were just talking about a play that happened to him this past week. K was attempting a try, and the R player got a good jump, jumped over the holder who had the ball on a block (without touching him or touching the ball) and knocked down the player who was beginning to make his move to kick the ball. Apparently the kicker delayed his movement to the ball allowing the R player to jump over the holder.

Now, the confusion came where the referee threw a flag for roughing the kicker, which in this case his partners talked him out of, because the player had not become a kicker yet as he had not contacted the ball. Apparently the play was not something they could call for unnecessary roughness, and they ended up waving off the flag, saying the try failed, and moved on.

Apparently the coach went wild, and so on.

Thoughts on how this was handled by the crew?

[Robert Goodman]

I can't judge "how it was handled by the crew", but I can go by your description to figure if there was a foul. It's not hurdling, because presumably the holder had a knee on the ground (or if he didn't, should be treated as such for purposes of judging hurdling), and it's not unnecessary roughness by virtue of the kicker's being out of the play (he's attempting to kick the ball, so he's part of the play), and of course it can't be roughing the kicker.

It could, however, be judged unnecessary roughness if the guy put a good lick on the kicker when he could've merely dived on the ball. The knockdown may or may not have been that kind of hit, considering that a kicker looking down at the ball might've been easily knocked off his feet without an attempt to injure or intimidate. Since the best team B could get would be possession of the ball (killing the play in Fed, possibly keeping it alive in NCAA), you have to look at whether he went out of his way to hit the potential kicker, or merely misjudged his leap and vaulted past the ball.

[MD Longhorn]

Nothing even remotely foul-like here.

[InsideTheStripe]

Not throwing the flag in the first place would have been good. But once it was on the ground, I think the crew did a good job handling this situation.

Kids to the darnedest things.

Add this to the list of weird things R may do... I once saw an R player kick the ball off the tee towards K's goal line when he beat the kicker to the ball. I think I blinked twice to make sure I wasn't dreaming before throwing the flag.

[Texas Aggie]

I once saw an R player kick the ball off the tee towards K's goal line when he beat the kicker to the ball. I think I blinked twice to make sure I wasn't dreaming before throwing the flag.

I had the exact same thing happen and pretty much the same reaction.