RefStripes.com
Football Officiating => General Discussion => Topic started by: TWPIONEERS on October 01, 2023, 09:53:56 PM
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I've got a question that maybe yall can help me with. I coach a 10u team but our games have refs from the highschool level. This weekend we tried to run the philly special just cause the kids had seen it and thought it would be fun. We got flagged for illegal motion. He said the qb cant go forward in motion it has to be horizontal. Is there a way to run that play and be legal?
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I've got a question that maybe yall can help me with. I coach a 10u team but our games have refs from the highschool level. This weekend we tried to run the philly special just cause the kids had seen it and thought it would be fun. We got flagged for illegal motion. He said the qb cant go forward in motion it has to be horizontal. Is there a way to run that play and be legal?
Not really. No player can be moving forward toward the line of scrimmage at the snap.
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Assuming you mean this play (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XmhBaUdges), it can be done legally -- and it was done legally there.
The QB moves forward pre-snap, which is legal. However, he then starts moving sideways and is actually stopped at the snap.
If you don't time the snap right and he's still moving forward at the snap, it would be illegal. However, if he's moving sideways or has come to a stop at the snap, then everything is fine.
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We had trained our QB once again he's 10 so he may not have done what we told him. But, the play was designed for him to go over to the tackles butt, get set for a second then snap the ball. But he said any forward motion was illegal. As I said the kid is 10 so maybe he messed up. But the explanation didn't make sense.
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This problem exists at all levels of football. How a coach designs a play and how it gets executed are two different things. Usually the instant thought is that it is the official's fault.
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If any forward motion pre-snap is illegal, how can you go from the huddle to the line before any play? Every lineman would be guilty of illegal motion on every play, or you don't have any linemen, so you have illegal formations.
Having done many youth league games over the years, 90% of the time when a coach says "Hey, we want do this trick play we saw on the internet" the trick play violates any number of procedural rules or tries to subvert the intent of actually playing football (*cough*wrong ball play*cough*). As such, any description is met with significant skepticism as to whether or not it aligns with the rules and some of my fellow officials tend to translate that into "We're not running any silly trick plays on my field!", which defeats the point of letting kids have fun playing a game.
I can't say for certain that the play you ran was legal, as I'd have to actually see the play, nor can I say that the official who flagged the play was wrong in his interpretation, because I didn't hear his words, but illegal motion is only a problem *at* the snap, not before the snap.
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Yea I respect officials quite a bit, and it was just a youth game so I didn't argue it too much. Especially with the point I made of my QB may have been the screw up. But I appreciate y'all's time.
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If any forward motion pre-snap is illegal, how can you go from the huddle to the line before any play? Every lineman would be guilty of illegal motion on every play, or you don't have any linemen, so you have illegal formations.
Having done many youth league games over the years, 90% of the time when a coach says "Hey, we want do this trick play we saw on the internet" the trick play violates any number of procedural rules or tries to subvert the intent of actually playing football (*cough*wrong ball play*cough*). As such, any description is met with significant skepticism as to whether or not it aligns with the rules and some of my fellow officials tend to translate that into "We're not running any silly trick plays on my field!", which defeats the point of letting kids have fun playing a game.
I can't say for certain that the play you ran was legal, as I'd have to actually see the play, nor can I say that the official who flagged the play was wrong in his interpretation, because I didn't hear his words, but illegal motion is only a problem *at* the snap, not before the snap.
Forward motion AT the snap has always been illegal. A player moving forward and then being set for a second before the snap is a shift. I thought everyone understood this basic principle.