FanPost

Best Seat in The House, Part 3: Throw the Ball!

Spartans, I am disappoint. - Brian Spurlock-USA Today Sports

Greetings, my fellow OFD officials in training! Another relatively great installment of Best Seat in The House is underway! I sincerely apologize for the lack of posting recently. Guys like Moses and Paint sometimes claim situations like "work getting in the way" or "family business." All great excuses justifiable reasons for taking a short sabbatical. Mine is completely selfish...I just got lazy. But I am back this week! I am now completely re-energized and ready to get back on the rules training horse and get this Commentariat back up to where it deserves to be regarding the NCAA Rulebook!

This last weekend, I attended the Texas Association of Sports Officials yearly state meeting down in hot and muggy Houston, TX and was able to sit in on some tremendous sessions around a myriad of great officiating topics. The highlight of that day was, once again, sitting in the glory of Dr. Rogers Redding, NCAA Secretary Rules editor. It's always a tremendous learning experience to be in his tutelage and his explanations are always tremendous. Maybe next week we will talk about that. Today, however, I want to discuss a rule that can sometimes cause casual fans to rip their collective hair out. Exactly what are officials looking for when we flag a play for Pass Interference?

To begin our excursion of learning about Pass Interference, I think it is valuable to understand the different qualifications officials look for in a particular play to rule whether an act was truly interference or merely good defense. For Defensive Interference, there are 6 categories and for Offensive Interference there are 4. However, before any act can be dropped into one of these buckets, two very distinct acts must occur. (1) The ball must be catchable and (2) there must be physical contact by the offender.

As officials, we are not very picky on these two counts. The overwhelming majority of the time, a ball WILL be catchable and in fact the rules specifically state that "when in doubt, the ball IS catchable." Basically, unless the ball lands in the third row of the stands (or in ND’s case, anywhere above the yellow mum line) the ball will be ruled to be ‘catchable.’ Contact to qualify for PI will also not be overly scrutinized. A hand on a player, feeling for where the other player is positioned is ok but any visible restriction or overt contact intended to gain a material advantage will do for this qualification.

Defensive Pass Interference

If both of those are qualified, then to rule whether contact falls under DEFENSIVE Pass Interference, we look to see if the defender has committed one of these criteria:

1. Not Playing the BallThe old "look for the ball" situation. If a defender never looks back for the ball and just rams into a receiver he has committed DPI. Take a look at the following clip to see this in action.

Syracuse player #3 never turns back to look for the ball, makes contact with A&M #15 and interferes. It is important to note that we do have 'face guarding' on this as well, but in the college game this is NOT a foul in itself. The NFL makes face guarding illegal, but not the NCAA.

2. Playing through the ReceiverYou will really only see this on passes over the middle of the field, but occasionally an outside receiver might have to deal with this. Receiver gains position and is stationary ready to receive a pass. Defender leaps over the top of the player in an attempt to intercept or deflect it.

3. Hook and Turn Again, usually this is for passes over the middle. Receiver attempts to catch the ball and the defender grabs the player(hook) usually around the waist and spins him in some direction(turn) to prevent him from catching the ball. The hook in itself is not illegal, but as soon as the player is redirected, a foul has been committed.

4. Arm Bar – There are two ways to commit an arm bar penalty. The first is by holding the player back from running by extending the arm across the chest and not allowing him to complete the route. The second is typically seen in jump-ball scenarios where the arm is used as a barrier to prevent the receiver from extending up to make a catch. If we see a receiver try to catch a ball with one hand, we get put on alert. Typically, players don’t catch the ball that way.

Aggie Defender grabs the arm of LSU receiver and doesn't allow him to make a full attempt to catch the ball.

5. Grab and RestrictThis is pretty self-explanatory. Defender grabs jersey or the player and doesn’t allow him to run his route. These are usually grandma calls because even the guy’s grandma up in the 30th row will see this one. However, grab and restrict can be subtle. This one, though...granny call:

Second receiver from the outside. Tries to run downfield and the defender just bear hugs him.

6. CutoffThis is almost always seen on sideline patterns. Out route and Flag route. Two receivers running side by side, defender doesn’t even touch the player with his hands but he gently pushes the receiver out of bounds to prevent him from making an in-bounds catch.

I was surprised I could find a clip so blatantly a foul for this. Usually this is a very subtle act and the defender gently rides the receiver OOB.

Offensive Pass Interference

Now offensive interference is much simpler. To be honest, though, we have a very bad success rate on this particular call. Officials are drilled over and over about the 6 DPI categories, all of our training videos focus on DPI, the rules favor the offense so DPI is more and more in focus. Collectively, we have done a poor job in successfully calling Offensive Interference. Here are the four buckets for that foul:

1. Creating SeparationThis is the oldie and goodie. The good-ole "push off." Another granny call, typically because if you see a receiver’s arms fully extended and a defender going the other direction, everybody and their momma will see the act.

Slot receiver runs a 7-yd curl route, shoves the LB away to create separation.

2. Driving Through a DefenderThe defensive player has established position and the receiver runs full steam ahead and plows into the defender, knocking him over. He curls in and makes a catch over the middle. Tight ends, I’m looking at you on this one.

Of course, I say it's usually the TE and the clip shows a WR doing it...

3. Blocking DownfieldUsually this will be committed on a broken play. Play action, screen that doesn’t really pan out correctly. Receiver bolts downfield or on a screen sets up for a block. QB scrambles around and cannot find a player so the receiver continues to block in case the QB breaks out on a run. Instead, the QB passes the ball downfield and the receiver is 7 yards off the LOS blocking. Not really his fault, but it’s still illegal.

LOS is the 37 and the slot receiver runs to the 29 and blocks for the outside receiver to run across the middle. We would ignore this if the block was within 3 yards of the LOS, but 8 yards downfield is going to be a foul.

4. Pick PlayThis is really a new one for us officials. This has always been illegal, but we used to lump it in with blocking downfield. Now, it gets its own category! Yaay! This is always going to be committed by crossing receivers. They may be on the same side of the ball or may cross midfield. WR88 goes across the middle and seeks out LB52. He blows his butt up and allows WR10 to run undefended across the middle in the clear. Our guys would NEVER do that.

Slot receiver runs straight at the linebacker covering the TE. Blows him up and the TE walks into the EZ wide open.

~~~

So there it is, boys and girls. Hopefully with this knowledge you will be less apt this season to scream and throw things at the television when Matthias Farley or KVR is called for DPI and you’re thinking "WHAT DID HE DO? HE DIDN’T EVEN TOUCH THE GUY!?" Or when Nelson Algholor (boo) goes for the seek-and-destroy move against Jarret Grace over the middle, you will be able to yell "OPI!!! OPI!!! Yeah, they got it, good."

The Commentariat is becoming more dangerously intelligent on the rules every session. By the end of this year, y’all will be ready to start calling games on your own. I look forward to seeing some of y’all in the stripes fairly soon. Happy flagging!

FanPosts are primarily for readers of One Foot Down to share and express information and commentary. The content provided doesn't always reflect the voice or collective thought of One Foot Down.

In This FanPost

Players