Another coaching failure that nearly causes a big problem

[ElvisLives]

New Orleans Bowl, around 3:00 (3). On kickoff, Western Kentucky receiver, in his own end zone, reaches up and makes a half-hearted effort to catch the ball, but muffs it. The ball falls to the ground in the end zone. The receiver doesn’t make an effort to recover or ‘down’ the ball - just starts to walk away. About the time somebody gets his attention to get on the still-moving ball, the R and L sound their whistles and signal touchback. The ball was still alive, so, officially, that would be an inadvertent whistle. But, nobody raised any issue.
Had there been a kicking team player in the area that knew the ball should still be alive, and was moving to play the ball, there may have been an issue.
C’mon coaches. Teach your receivers to either catch the ball, or just let it go - untouched. Don’t put us is a predicament that might not work out so well for you.

[ajv]

Not exactly the same scenario, but it reminds me of one of my favorite situations from years ago.

We had invited the local teams to send players to our officating training sessions. That worked out really well, actually - some of those players went on to have some nice post-playing officiating careers with us.

Anyway, we were talking about responsibilities of the deep officials on a punt (I mentioned it wasn't exactly the same scenario mentioned above). When a punt was rolling on the ground, sometimes a punt receiver would just stop the moving ball by kind-of patting it to a stop with his hand without grasping it and then both teams would just walk off the field. The officals would check that no player wanted to secure the ball and blow the play dead. This had happened a few times in games that season.

At our official's training meeting we went over the rules and talked about having whistle discipline in giving anyone enough chance to recover it if they wanted to.

One player's eyes lit up and asked probing questions about when the play was dead, when would we blow the whistle etc. - very engaged.

A few weeks later his team was on punt coverage and his teammate did the patting the ball to a stop thing. The teams relaxed and started to their sidelines. All except our guy, who ran to the ball, recovered it and made lots of yards - I don't recall the details. As he handed the ball to us he smiled saying "That was it, wasn't it?"

We never saw anyone just pat the ball down again.

[ElvisLives]

Not exactly the same scenario, but it reminds me of one of my favorite situations from years ago.

We had invited the local teams to send players to our officating training sessions. That worked out really well, actually - some of those players went on to have some nice post-playing officiating careers with us.

Anyway, we were talking about responsibilities of the deep officials on a punt (I mentioned it wasn't exactly the same scenario mentioned above). When a punt was rolling on the ground, sometimes a punt receiver would just stop the moving ball by kind-of patting it to a stop with his hand without grasping it and then both teams would just walk off the field. The officals would check that no player wanted to secure the ball and blow the play dead. This had happened a few times in games that season.

At our official's training meeting we went over the rules and talked about having whistle discipline in giving anyone enough chance to recover it if they wanted to.

One player's eyes lit up and asked probing questions about when the play was dead, when would we blow the whistle etc. - very engaged.

A few weeks later his team was on punt coverage and his teammate did the patting the ball to a stop thing. The teams relaxed and started to their sidelines. All except our guy, who ran to the ball, recovered it and made lots of yards - I don't recall the details. As he handed the ball to us he smiled saying "That was it, wasn't it?"

We never saw anyone just pat the ball down again.

Good story. Thanks for sharing.

[Stinterp]

I have not seen a Team R player ever touch the ball in this manner, but I have seen Team K do this.  Our conference is instructed if there is no player moving toward the ball to kill it immediately and have a talk to the player that touched it. The conference does not want a return on this play if it can be avoided.

[ajv]

Of course, you're completely correct. I misremembered the setup to the scenario. It would have been K who patted the ball down on the punt.

[J12]

I was always taught that in downing a punt, you pick up the ball, watch the covering official blow his whistle and signal to stop the clock, and they you hand the ball to the official.