GB@CHI: Cutting corners

Wild Card round: Did Green Bay’s Christian Watson break the plane? Yes. Did he ever touch any portion of the end zone? No. Thus we say no score. Line up and run another play from inside the 1.

Are we being too demanding? Could be. Fans have watched plays such as this ruled a touchdown for decades, so to change that thinking is a real gear-grinder for many people.

Our view is this: Breaking the plane is not enough when points are involved. To earn the highest payout in football, a heaping helping of six points, a ball carrier should be required to make some degree of in-bounds contact with the end zone. If a receiver needs to get two feet down just to get credit for a catch, it seems reasonable to ask a ball carrier to get at least some fragment of his body into the end zone to walk away with six points. Otherwise we’ll continue to witness All-Ugly touchdown rulings such as the bunnyhop touchdown perpetrated by Trevor Lawrence (see Week 9). Hocus Bogus Rating: 3

HOU@PIT: In or out?

Wild Card round. Just like Green Bay’s Christian Watson, Houston’s Christian Kirk flies above the goal line before he crash-lands with his torso out of bounds and his left hip in bounds. It’s a simultaneous ground strike, so anywhere else on the field he would be ruled out of bounds. Yet here, due to the magic of passing through a portion of the end zone’s airspace, he is awarded six points. 

We have seen this play ruled a touchdown for decades, so most people, hypnotized by the break-the-plane rule, would agree that it’s a score. And we think that if the break-the-plane rule could be modified with what we call a “momentum clause,” it should be. But if we stick to logic, where in-bounds contact with the end zone should be required for six points, then this play falls short. Hocus Bogus Rating: 2