On display: Meeting high standards

Our Week 10 recap begins not with an airspace touchdown but with an example of what makes football so appealing: It is a demanding game played by exceptional athletes who give fans a thrill when they rise to the occasion and successfully meet its most rigorous challenges.

Here Denver’s Courtland Sutton catches a hope-and-a-prayer fourth-down throw tossed by a scrambling Russell Wilson, somehow drags both feet inbounds despite being just inches from the sideline, then maintains control of the ball after getting flattened by Buffalo safety Taylor Rapp (20). Amazing.

If such high standards must be met — particularly getting both feet down inbounds — just to get credit for a completed pass, why is it ball carriers who manage only an end zone wave-over can walk away with six points when they make no physical inbounds contact with the game’s designated scoring area? 

If you don’t hit the dartboard, should you expect to get credit for a bullseye? No. That’s asinine. But if you wave the ball over the end zone’s airspace, even for just a split second, you collect six points. We think that’s just nuts.

NO@MIN: High flyer

As Minnesota’s Josh Dobbs races toward the corner of the end zone, we assume his brain is processing various risk assessments.

Turn upfield and risk getting clobbered by any of three New Orleans defenders, almost certainly finishing short of the end zone.

Or, keep running wide left and take advantage of the exceedingly generous break-the-plane rule, which relieves a ball carrier of any obligation to make contact with the end zone. All that’s needed is to leave a vapor trail through its airspace and, voila, you have a contactless six points.

Dobbs chooses the unheroic but eminently sensible Plan B, leaps through a wedge of end zone airspace and comes back to earth a foot or so out of bounds. Not to worry, of course, since once a ball carrier breaks the Great Invisible Plane, all laws of logic that govern the sideline as out-of-bounds territory are immediately suspended.

Thus Dobbs enjoys the benefit of what is essentially an extra-wide end zone. We just shake our heads and wonder how this makes sense to most fans. Hocus Bogus rating: 3.5

DET@LAC: Really close, part 1

Here the Chargers’ Austin Ekeler gets credit for grinding forward and, as judged by the officials, breaking the plane. Maybe yes, maybe no.

Yet if our rule was in place (a touchdown is awarded only if a ball carrier makes some physical contact with the end zone before he is down, and the ball has likewise reached the goal line or beyond), we would rule this a Nix Six since his left leg is down while his hands and the ball have yet to contact the end zone.

We would give the Chargers a first down, but not a touchdown. Rating: 2.5

ATL@AZ: Really close, part 2

As with the Joshua Dobbs touchdown discussed above, Atlanta’s Desmond Ridder runs as far left as he can to avoid Arizona’s Budda Baker (3) and zooms over the corner of the end zone in midair.

Yet his first contact beyond the goal line involves his left foot, which clips the sideline. Are we being too nitpicky here? Consider this: Had a receiver caught a pass in this location with his foot in the same position, he would be ruled out of bounds. Why is this different?

To us, the act of breaking the plane, the lifeblood of airspace touchdowns, should not override the fact that the ball carrier’s first point of contact beyond the goal line occurred out of bounds. We would tell Ridder to line up inside the 1, first-and-goal, and try again. Rating: 2.5