WAS@ATL: Side steppin’

It seems like a simple concept: In a contact sport, if you don’t make contact with the designated scoring area, you do not get credit for a score.

The break-the-plane rule flies in the face of that logic, and here Atlanta’s Tyler Allgeier, after some good effort by Washington safety Jeremy Reaves forced him toward the sidelines, performed a hop, skip and a jump near the pylon, but he never touched the end zone. Yet because he briefly waved the ball in the end zone’s airspace, he gets six points. Feeble logic. Hocus Bogus Rating: 3.5

CHI@LV: Flyover

Chicago’s D’Andre Swift sees no reason why he should risk taking a lick when instead he can just jump over the corner of the end zone, wave the ball in its airspace, place neither foot in the designated scoring area, and trot away with six points the easy way. Too easy, in our view. Rating: 3

College bonus: Way over and out

The college game delivered the whackiest no-touch touchdown of this weekend. Tennessee DB Colton Hood (8) nearly pushes Mississippi State’s Seydou Traore out of bounds, yet Traore manages to stay upright, lunge at the pylon, and get a fragment of the ball to pass over it before he crashes to the ground about two feet wide of the end zone. He never touches any part of it.

The inventive ESPN graphics crew was so impressed by Traore’s hang time that it digitally attached some wings to his jersey. It demonstrates how spectators get so jazzed by pylon dives. For a heart-clutching moment, people allow themselves to detach intellectually from the basic understanding that, in a contact sport, a ball carrier should be expected to contact the designated scoring area, i.e., the end zone.

Instead, they become mesmerized by the novelty of the occasion. Can this guy somehow, for a split-second, wave the ball within a wisp of the end zone’s airspace? If so, his successful contortion mimics the thrill of beating a carnival barker when your fastball knocks over a pyramid of weighted milk bottles. Yay, you beat the odds. You get to take home the biggest prize on the midway.

But, in a supposedly rational game customarily governed by demanding rules, they hand out six points for this? Wow. Rating: 5