Fair Catch Rule question
Delete this topic if it has alrady been discussed - I looked and didn't see that anyone posted about it. I was at the Maryland game and there was a weird play in the second half when Peppers was returning a punt that bounced in front of him. It looked like the refs said he called a fair catch. Did they explain what happened on the TV broadcast because I don't think he motioned for a fair catch at all. Really curious what happened there.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:23 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 3:27 PM ^
What was odd is that he made the exact same motion on the previous punt (pointing with both arms to indicate the punt was short and that anyone on the UM return team should vacate the area, lest they unintentionally contact the punt after a bounce). On replay his left arm never was above his shoulder and should not have been misconstrued as a fair catch signal. Refs Minus All the Points.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:42 PM ^
Not only has Peppers done that, but I noticed it in another game as well. Some random returner holding both arms out sort of signaling to "steer clear of this general area". I didn't see anything abnormal in Peppers' return, and given how common it seems to be, feels very odd that the official picked this random occurrence to put his foot down.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:54 PM ^
officiating crew beforehand what Peppers is doing when he makes that hand signal or simply change the signal so as not to confuse the officials about his intention.
Apparently, the back judge saw the motion twice and regarded it as signal of some kind that was fair-catch related and decided to blow the play dead. Peppers never put his hand up to signal a fair catch, but the official didn't know what his hand motions meant. You can never assume a returner will break one and that is one of those plays in football where there is danger in misinterpreting signals by the returner that both influence penalty calls and defensive reaction, whether it results in interference or not.
So, Peppers or his coach ought to confer with the crew beforehand and say look my guy tries to direct blockers down field to get away or to move in a certain way, but don't think he is calling for a fair catch. He knows what a fair catch signal is, when he points he is directing traffic, not signaling for a fair catch.
October 6th, 2015 at 4:01 PM ^
Telling the officials doesn't make it clearer for the coverage team.
October 6th, 2015 at 4:58 PM ^
the officials were. Peppers was going ahead with his return and was getting help from his teammates, it was the official who thought the signal was an indication of a fair catch.
And any team would communicate with the officials beforehand if they wanted to be sure a certain action on the field wasn't confused for a violation. That's just being smart and preparingthe officials for something that could happen. You might find this surprising, but coaches regularly do this kind of thing.
October 6th, 2015 at 4:10 PM ^
The main issue with the signal is not what the officials think, but what the opposing team thinks. The most important job of the fair catch signal is communicating to the punt coverage unit that this player should not be tackled. So having a conversation with the referees would not be enough. They would have to include the other team in the conversation too and go over how to interpret particular motions. This seems to me a genuinely difficult question.
I didn't see the Peppers move myself so maybe it looked nothing like a fair catch signal and the referees made a dumb mistake. But I can understand that the referees cannot cut things close. Any signal that could be misinterpreted by the opposing players could give the return team a competitive advantage.
October 6th, 2015 at 5:09 PM ^
and not hearing one would suggest the play is still live. Why do they have whistles and delay signals. A mistinterpreted signal could lead to interference but it's a tackle if the signal is not made or if an invalid signal is made. The punishment for the coverage team is based on overt action, not inaction on a punt return.
A fair catch signal is a vigorous wave of the right hand extended in the air, it's not doing a Vince Smith point and trigger action, which is what Peppers did and does on various returns. So, either he changes that behavior or they tell the officials beforehand this is what he does to direct traffic downfield. A fair catch is a delayed dead ball play which automatically results in a whistle once the play is over.
An invalid fair catch means that the returner has tried to trick the coverage team into thinking he has legally caught a punt for forward progress down field. Play continues until it is whistled dead. Everyone playing the game knows that.
October 6th, 2015 at 6:08 PM ^
For example, take the relatively common occurrence where a punt is kicked high enough so that the punt coverage guys arrive at the returner before he catches it. In that situation, whether the returner is immediately hit or not depends almost entirely on whether or not the coverage guys saw the fair catch signal. They do not wait to see whether there will be or won't be a whistle. It simply happens too fast. So the fact remains that the other team needs to know for sure whether or not a fair catch has been called. I agree with you that if the motion does not at all resemble a fair catch signal, the referees should not call it. I'm simply saying that as a referee, you can't leave any margin for error because any misinterpretation would grant the receiving team an advantage.
October 6th, 2015 at 7:06 PM ^
Not true. The the players go off of what they see the kick returner do. It isn't uncommon for the players to not even be able to hear the whistle in loud stadiums. The only time the whistle gets involved is on touchbacks on kickoff.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:27 PM ^
He was trying to direct traffic, and one of the refs mistook his vigorous pointing as a fair-catch signal.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:59 PM ^
Man! If only he was more lackadaisical with his play.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:30 PM ^
TV basically said something along the lines of "I guess there was a little wiggle in the left arm that could be mistaken for a fair catch signal." I thought it was weak as it didn't appear any Maryland players interpreted the "motion" as a fair catch signal.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:31 PM ^
The ref just wants peppers first return TD to be aginast state so he was holding him back
October 6th, 2015 at 3:32 PM ^
That's a fair question.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:34 PM ^
This is basically just a judgment call, right? 99% of the time, motion like that isn't going to get called a fair catch, but if the ref sees something he thinks could be construed as such, he's going to blow the whistle. It was weird in this instance, but it's just one of those things. IIRC, they've really tweaked what a fair catch signal entails, and it may have even been one of those "points of emphasis" in recent years.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:36 PM ^
... even if he did call a fair catch, once it hits the ground it is no longer considered a fair catch and the ball can be advanced (unless they changed the rule recently)... either way, he was pointing at the ball, which he does everytime it's not near him to catch, which i think is fine.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:45 PM ^
Yeah, once the ball hits the ground it can't be fairly caught, can it?
October 6th, 2015 at 3:45 PM ^
It's the opposite, actually. Once you call a fair catch you can't advance the ball, even if it hits the ground first. I don't think that's a new rule, but I guess it might be.
October 6th, 2015 at 4:02 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 9:36 PM ^
It wasn't a fair catch signal. I have no idea what the officials might have thought that they saw, but unless Peppers's head is at about waist level, it was a bad call.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:37 PM ^
he should have been penalized for trying to advance it.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:37 PM ^
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October 6th, 2015 at 3:45 PM ^
It was a bad call in two ways. First, the signal by Peppers was clearly not a valid or invalid fair catch signal. It was a point to another player on the field. Second, once the official determined that it was a signal, Peppers should have been penalized five yards for advancing the ball.
October 6th, 2015 at 3:46 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:18 PM ^
This is no such thing as avoiding future idiotic refs.
October 6th, 2015 at 5:42 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:13 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:15 PM ^
it was stated very clearly. waving a hand "over your head". it cant be more clear. no matter what rule is created refs just cant get it right. remember a couple weeks ago when michigan punted inside the 5 yard line, the returner never even signaled for a fair catch but the ball went completly over his head where a michigan defender caught it on the fly. the returner stepped forward after the ball went over his head and blocked a michigan player who was given a penelty for interference, what?
October 6th, 2015 at 4:43 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:18 PM ^
Per usual, the refs screwed the pooch
October 6th, 2015 at 4:20 PM ^
Wish he would have been given a chance to return that, but seeing it from the ref's point of view makes me less upset.
Say that Peppers was actually trying to call a fair catch with that motion. Peppers makes that motion and thinks that he won't have to brace for impact when he catches the ball. The ref, however, sees it as a pointing motion and doesn't register it as a fair catch. Peppers in this case is a sitting duck who thinks he has the protection of a fair catch that isn't actually there. The other team can completely destroy him, legally.
The assumption in this situation is that Peppers is the only one who thinks that his motion has registered as a fair catch. Generally the ref and punting team are on the same page when it comes to the punt returner calling for a fair catch.
Long story short, the ref might have been unsure if the call was for a fair catch or not and decided to blow it dead in order to protect the player. Just my take, though.
October 6th, 2015 at 4:41 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:53 PM ^
Not disagreeing with you. The wrong call was made, without a doubt. I was just trying to rationalize what the ref was possibly thinking.
October 6th, 2015 at 4:24 PM ^
Speaking of Fair Catch Signals, the Utah returner in this clip has to pull off looking like he is going to "fair-catch" the ball without waving/signaling that he is going to do so. Fun play that the Bears tried a few years ago with Hester as the decoy man.
October 6th, 2015 at 4:32 PM ^
Hilarious, but why did they waste that play on a game where they were up by a million? The score is 48-13 at that point
October 6th, 2015 at 4:38 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:45 PM ^
I thought the same thing. The only explanation I can come up with is that this isn't the sort of thing you can pull off whenever you want. The punt has to be in the right spot for one guy to catch it and the other to be far enough away to distract the coverage team.
October 6th, 2015 at 4:47 PM ^
Hilarious - Yes. One of the funniest parts of the clip is in the interaction between the decoy-return-man on the one hand and the first gunner on the other. At some point, the return-man must say something spiteful to the gunner. The gunner's reaction (at 0:10) is priceless.
October 6th, 2015 at 9:48 PM ^
You don't get much control over when you run the play--it's not like it's something you can call since it requires a shanked punt. It may have been active for multiple weeks: the next shanked punt, we're running this play.
October 6th, 2015 at 5:31 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:24 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:28 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:34 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:44 PM ^
October 6th, 2015 at 4:52 PM ^
Question: I thought you could advance a ball once it hit the ground, even after a fair catch signal. Did the rule change?
October 6th, 2015 at 5:00 PM ^
Here's the rule for a valid signal as it appears in Rule 2, Section 8 -
ARTICLE 2. A valid signal is a signal given by a player of Team B who has obviously signaled his intention by extending one hand only clearly above his head and waving that hand from side to side of his body more than once.
Of course, it defines an invalid signal as anything that fails to meet this requirement or is given after a catch or after a kick strikes the ground or a player.
October 6th, 2015 at 5:42 PM ^
is to avoid situations where the receiver fakes out the defenders by making them think he's fair catching when he isn't.
Thus the refs will whistle any sort of motion from the receiver that looks even vaguely like a fair catch signal so as to avoid any confusion over whether he was or was not signalling for a fair catch.
Peppers needs to be coached to keep his arms down, period. The refs have to call what they see in real time from field level, not what 50 video cameras pick up from the top of the stadium - so the solution is to give them no reason to think you're making any kind of a signal unless you mean it.
October 6th, 2015 at 6:38 PM ^
Plus it wasn't his pointing that everyone keeps pointing out that they called an invalid fair catch signal it was after the pointing when his left arm swings up in the air towards his head, Jabrill just needs to be more careful with his arms.