The mystery of Airspace Touchdowns;
why on earth do we accept them?

By TD Wood
Editor, Fixtherule.com

This site’s origins can be traced to the closing minutes of Super Bowl LIV.

Flashback to Feb. 2, 2020: In Miami, San Francisco leads 20-17. Less than three minutes remain in the fourth quarter. The Chiefs face third-and-goal on the 49ers’ 5-yard line.

Kansas City QB Patrick Mahomes flips a short pass to RB Damien Williams. Williams dashes for a corner of the end zone. CB Richard Sherman fights off a block and shoulder-pops him at the 1, knocking him out of bounds.

On his way out, Williams’ front right foot grazes the sideline as he simultaneously waves the ball at the goal line and pylon. He never touches the end zone.

And?

OK, for those of you who remember those vintage IBM commercials, you make the call.

Fox Sports

Down judge Kent Payne, refereeing his third Super Bowl, was on the goal line, three steps from the pylon. Moments after all this high-speed commotion unfolded in front of him, without hesitation he raised both hands overhead, ruling a touchdown.

But because so many unusual things happened so fast, how did he know? Is it possible he wasn’t sure, but feeling the glare of a global spotlight, he figured he needed to make a call — any call — and do it quickly so he appeared decisive? Could he have been counting on instant replay to bail him out if he guessed wrong?

If so, who could blame him? On close-call plays, that’s become a smart officiating strategy. NFL refs seem to have adopted an unwritten policy of making a best-guess ruling on chaotic plays and turning to replay cameras to sort it out. Only on this occasion, with no camera squared up with the goal line, replay clarified nothing.

“That right foot comes out of bounds,” analyst Troy Aikman said. “Where’s the ball before that happens? There’s just nothing really just straight down the (goal) line to know . . . if the tip of that ball . . . hits any part of that white line. I don’t know if there’s going to be anything there that they’re going to be able to overturn it.”

Former NFL official Mike Pereira, rules analyst for the Fox crew, concurred: “This doesn’t look to me to be clear enough to overturn.”

Even though Sherman had done his job — keep the ball carrier out of the end zone — the call stood. The Chiefs took the lead, and command of the game. Final: KC 31-20.

I was left to wonder: Was anyone else annoyed by the fact that the most crucial play in the most important, most-watched game of the 2019 season — and not just any season, but the National Football League’s look-how-far-we’ve-come 100th anniversary season — was decided by guesswork?

Fox Sports; see alternative views from TSN and Los Angeles Times

And what about a play from that season’s Divisional Round? On third-and-goal from the 1 in the second quarter, Green Bay’s Aaron Jones was awarded a touchdown on an up-the-gut run even though the ball (admittedly hard to spot in replays) never appeared to reach the goal line. 

Fox Sports

Seattle DE Quinton Jefferson and LB Bobby Wagner wrestled Jones to the ground, where he landed on his back with the ball seemingly on his chest, short of the line. A great play by the D? Could have been, but the refs on the field had a different view, apparently believing he broke the plane. They ruled it a touchdown.

Those six points mattered. The Packers won by five, 28-23.

Then there’s this gem from the 2019 regular season, when Buffalo’s Josh Allen got jolted midway through a springboard hop from inside the 1 and the ball was knocked out of his hands. True, when judged by the existing break-the-plane rule, for a split-second the ball in Allen’s hands entered the end zone’s airspace, and that, by rule, is worth six points. But to us, that seems like a touchdown by technicality. Visually, it’s not a convincing, or satisfying, play to watch.

CBS Sports

All of which leads me to say: C’mon, man. This is a contact sport. A ball carrier, I believe, should be required to contact the end zone to be awarded a touchdown. Doesn’t that just make fundamental sense?

I just shrugged off my argument until the Damien Williams ruling in Super Bowl LIV left me miffed and vexed. I wondered: Has anyone ever thought to question the logic of football’s airspace allowance? How often do these kinds of touchdowns happen? Does anyone know? Does anyone care?

Apparently not — at least until I shared some of my low-grade outrage on the topic with a few colleagues, expressing it with the dizzy fervor of Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles. (“Rurrburt!“) This calls for a crusade, I was told by those who agreed with me. Do something!

So I wrote an opinion piece for a now-retired website, But mouthing off only generated a few harrumphs of agreement and reinforcement. I needed more than authentic frontier gibberish. I needed data — mind-stirring, change-enacting data.

Thus I launched this site, FixtheRule, what I call my personal CWOT — colossal waste of time. I dedicated myself to documenting and watching every touchdown, more than 5,800 of them, of every NFL game for four seasons (2020 through 2023), sometimes watching the same touchdown over and over and over to see if it involved legit end zone contact or was yet just another end zone airball. I finally funneled all of my findings into this website, an electronic soapbox of unusual size.

Among the things I have learned:

• Airspace touchdowns are surprisingly common. In 2021 and 2020, an ATD occurred in roughly one of every four games. In 2022, they showed up almost once in every three games. I did not expect the numbers to be that high.
• Fans love the existing break-the-plane/bang-the-pylon rule when it favors their team. Example: Seattle fans were delighted when, in an overtime game during Week 2 of the 2023 season, Tyler Lockett was awarded a game-winning touchdown for hitting a pylon — even though he never touched the end zone.

Fox Sports

• Fans hate the existing rule when it goes against their team. Seattle fans, for a second example, are still bitter about a suspect break-the-plane call in Super Bowl XL (played in 2006) that gave the Pittsburgh Steelers a halftime lead, and an edge in momentum, in what became a 21-10 Pittsburgh victory.

ABC Sports

• The break-the-plane rule allows ball carriers to benefit from an extra-wide scoring zone at the pylons, giving them an advantage against pursuing defenders. They can wave a ball over a pylon as they run outside that pylon and their feet land out of bounds. How is this fair to the defense?
• End zone pylons, 4″ x 4″ goal line sentinels (these days joined by camera-bearing sideline counterparts), are by NFL Rulebook definition (Field Markings, Point 5) “must be placed at inside edges of white lines and should not touch the surface of the actual playing field itself.” In other words, they are located out of bounds. Still, if a ball carrier pokes a pylon anywhere (even the outer edge) or waves the ball over one, by current rule it’s a touchdown. Why? Because Rule 3 (Definitions), Section 11 (The Field), Article 3 (End Zone) curiously informs us “The goal line and the pylons are in the End Zone.” Really? Is this not a contradiction? Yet if a ball carrier lets the edge of his shoe graze the sideline in front of the pylon, he would be ruled out of bounds. (Unless, of course, he is Damien Williams in Super Bowl LIV.)
• A rule change such as the one I propose — that to earn a touchdown, a ball carrier must touch at least some portion of the end zone, however small that fragment of paydirt might be, while the ball also breaks the plane — would be a step forward in logic and would improve the optics of the game. It would put an end to these just-visiting leaping space probes such as the Josh Allen flight of fancy cited earlier.
• Creating a rule is not easy. As soon as you think you have an iron-clad solution in place, a half-dozen what-ifs could potentially pop up. The revised rule that colleagues and I devised is not perfect, but to us (and probably anyone on the defensive side of the ball) it makes more sense when it comes to awarding touchdowns than the existing rule.
• We’re guessing the higher-ups at the NFL won’t endorse our proposed rule revision. We imagine scoring = excitement is the league’s preferred formula for success, and any hare-brained concept that might reduce the number of touchdowns will be viewed as a bad idea. Our counter: We don’t want fewer touchdowns, just better touchdowns. We’re hoping more innovative thinkers, such as the rule-makers at the United Football League, might agree.

Football is a great game. Our hope is to make it just a little better.

Write: editor@fixtherule.com