16 games, Oct. 24/27/28, 2024

566 +2/232\\ 

Week 8: 87 touchdowns, 5 ATDs

 

CAR@DEN: Sean Payton Special

It seems evident that Sean Payton is fond of this shortcut to six points.

While we can find no reports where Payton discusses this Easy Score tactic, it seems obvious he encourages it. Maybe he even coaches it.

Payton and QB Drew Brees both arrived in New Orleans in 2006. As explained by Nick Underhill in a 2018 article for the New Orleans Advocate, through late 2018, Brees had attempted 13 springboard leaps from the 1 and scored on 12 of them. It’s our guess that he rarely reached the end zone on any of those tries.

That wasn’t the goal, of course. All Brees intended to do was poke the ball into the end zone’s airspace, exploit the convenient leniency of the break-the-plane rule, then smugly trot to the sidelines with an easy six points in his hip pocket. He was still pulling the trick in his final season (see Week 5 and Week 7 of 2020).

So it seems Payton has convinced rookie QB Bo Nix that this is a clever way to pick up an easy six. And why not? A momentary hop and reach into the end zone’s airspace is much simpler than trying to plow through the defense and actually make contact with the end zone.

Nix (we assume with Payton’s blessing) was similarly credited with a hopalong touchdown while also bypassing the end zone in Week 5. We’re guessing we’ll see this over and over and over during his partnership with Payton. Ain’t that just thrilling news? Hocus Bogus Rating: 5

Video and image: CBS Sports

Drew Bress goes up an over (but not in) against the Chargers in 2020. Image: ESPN.

PHI@CIN: Not enough push in the tush

Philadelphia’s much-discussed “tush push” tactic used when the offense is within a yard of the goal line routinely benefits from the break-the-plane rule. Twice one week earlier against the Giants, QB Jalen Hurts was credited with two touchdowns, though on both occasions he only managed to lean over the goal line and lay atop a scrum of bodies, never touching the end zone.

Here he does not even accomplish that. He only briefly lifts the ball above the goal line before getting bulldozed backwards. Somehow that is considered good enough for six points, and all that defensive resistance went for naught.

The rule we propose (to be credited with a touchdown, a ball carrier must make some direct contact, however minimal, with the end zone while carrying the ball to or beyond the goal line) would require a more convincing conclusion to Philly’s prized goal-line strategy. Rating: 5

Video and image: CBS Sports

DAL@SF: Incomprehensible

How can anyone rule this a touchdown? How?

The elbow of San Francisco’s Brock Purdy lands short of the goal line and the ball, most sentient beings would agree, has not passed through the field of play’s Great Invisible Plane. So how is this a touchdown?

It can only be explained by what must be the league’s desperate wish to generate as many points as possible and thus stoke the Excitement Furnace that it hopes will keep viewers engaged and watching pharmaceutical commercials. Never mind the absence of logic. Just keep the points piling up. Rating: 5

 

Video and image: NBC Sports

CAR@DEN: We’ve seen this before

Just three weeks earlier, during Week 5, Denver’s Bo Nix and Jaleel McLaughlin were both credited with no-touch touchdowns in the same game. And here it happens again in Week 8.

On both occasions McLaughlin, a second-year running back, demonstrates that he has learned there is no need to touch the end zone to walk off the field with six points. Just use the break-the-plane rule to widen the end zone, meaning your first foot to cross the goal line can land way wide of the designated scoring area and the officials will nevertheless grant you a touchdown by technicality. That’s a sweet deal.

Not so sweet for Panthers’ CB Chau Smith-Wade (26) who forces McLaughlin wide, then shoves him so McLaughlin’s feet cannot land in the end zone. Alas, the break-the-plane rule negates commendable defensive effort. Rating: 4

 

Video and images: CBS Sports

NYG@PIT: ‘And he stays in’

So says ESPN’s Joe Buck as Tyrone Tracy get yanked out of bounds at the goal line by Pittsburgh safety Minkah Fitzpatrick (39). Yet no part of Tracy’s body ever touched the end zone.

Did Tracy drag the ball through some of the end zone’s ether as he was heading out of bounds? Who really knows? But sticking by their undeclared close-enough standards, the officials handed Tracy six points for his efforts. The most Fitzpatrick could have expected was maybe a live-with-it shrug. Sad. Rating: 4

 

Video and image: ESPN

College: A sampler

How many airspace touchdowns occur each week in college football? We’ll never know, though we imagine it is quite a few. Here are a few examples from the final weekend of October that caught our attention.

 

ESPN

CBS Sports

ABC

ABC