re: USFL new rule: fumble out of bounds in end zone: offense retains possession

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they get a do-over? Not penalized at all for fumbling? Hell naw.

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Pretty simple really. If the first baseman drops a throw, the runner is safe. There must be a "catch" to be an out. So if catcher drops strike 3, he has to throw to the base for the out.

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but for some reason, people lose their freaking minds when it's a fumble.

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and why not? if it happens anywhere else on the field the ball is returned to where it was fumbled from.

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So you wanna reward the offense for fricking up?

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Sometimes it’s OK to admit when you’re wrong.

For years, I’ve hated the infamous fumble-through-the-end-zone, lose-the-ball play. I’ve called it the worst rule in football, because man, it sure seems terrible. You get that close to the end zone, you make one mistake and you lose everything? That ain’t right!

So when the Cleveland Browns’ Rashard Higgins reached out toward the pylon in last weekend’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs, only to fumble away the ball, possession and a good chunk of Cleveland’s hopes, I was the living version of that Leo DiCaprio-pointing-at-the-TV gif, all full of righteous rage. And I wasn’t alone.

Only this time, I didn’t take a flamethrower to my house. I did what we probably all should do in these situations: I consulted some NFL rules experts. And what I found was that the “worst rule in football” … isn’t so bad after all.

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The sacred end zone

The end zone, in football, is a quasi-mystical creation, infinitely high and, in rulebooks past, infinitely broad. Its quirks don’t always make sense — you score a touchdown if the ball just brushes the front of the end zone plane, but a receiver who catches the ball entirely within the end zone must get both feet down to also get a touchdown. A rusher who somehow landed feet-first in the end zone but with the ball outside of it would not get a touchdown, but a receiver with both feet in and the ball outside the back of the end zone would.

Let’s put that aside for a second while we focus on this particular rule. “It comes back to the core objective of the game, back to the 1870s,” says Ben Austro, editor-in-chief of the all-things-officiating website Football Zebras. “Defend the goal. Do not allow the offense to penetrate the goal with the ball.”

Whatever else is going on when a player fumbles the ball forward, we can all agree on this: the offense did not penetrate the goal with the ball. Rationalizations, philosophical arguments, poetic justifications … all of them are secondary to that fact.

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The Impetus Rule

Because nothing is ever simple in football, there’s a philosophical-slash-legalistic construct known as the Impetus Rule. It’s the NFL rules version of you-break-it, you-bought-it, and it comes into play when the ball enters that mystical end zone.

“Impetus is the force that puts the ball into an end zone,” NFL head of officiating Dean Blandino said a few years back, speaking of this exact situation. “So if a team provides the impetus that puts a ball into their opponent’s end zone ... then they are responsible for it. They’re responsible for it. And if the ball gets out of bounds through the end zone then it is a touchback.”

In other words, if the offense burps up the ball into the end zone, it’s the responsibility of the offense — not the referees, not the rulebook and certainly not the defense — to get the ball back under control. If the offense can’t do that, too bad, so sad.

“Some say the NFL rule is too punitive, that the offense shouldn't lose possession in a situation like that,” says NFL historian Dan Daly. “But I kind of like the idea of the field being finite — and that when you fumble out of the end zone it's like it drops off the face of the earth. Gone forever. A fumble between the goal lines, that's different; you're still in the field of play. But they don't call it the end line for nothing.”

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The Impetus Rule

Because nothing is ever simple in football, there’s a philosophical-slash-legalistic construct known as the Impetus Rule. It’s the NFL rules version of you-break-it, you-bought-it, and it comes into play when the ball enters that mystical end zone.

“Impetus is the force that puts the ball into an end zone,” NFL head of officiating Dean Blandino said a few years back, speaking of this exact situation. “So if a team provides the impetus that puts a ball into their opponent’s end zone ... then they are responsible for it. They’re responsible for it. And if the ball gets out of bounds through the end zone then it is a touchback.”

In other words, if the offense burps up the ball into the end zone, it’s the responsibility of the offense — not the referees, not the rulebook and certainly not the defense — to get the ball back under control. If the offense can’t do that, too bad, so sad.

“Some say the NFL rule is too punitive, that the offense shouldn't lose possession in a situation like that,” says NFL historian Dan Daly. “But I kind of like the idea of the field being finite — and that when you fumble out of the end zone it's like it drops off the face of the earth. Gone forever. A fumble between the goal lines, that's different; you're still in the field of play. But they don't call it the end line for nothing.”

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