Compilation: It’s a stretch

Despite some very close calls, no airspace touchdowns occurred during Week 8—just the third time since this site launched in 2020 that a week of games was free of ATDs. That’s a wonderful thing.

We use the occasion to highlight one of the reasons we advocate for a modification of the break-the-plane rule: goal line stretches where the ball carrier, recognizing the end zone is a bridge too far, makes a desperate reach toward paydirt with the ball, hoping to nick a fragment of the end zone’s airspace and be awarded a touchdown by technicality.

The existing rule makes such efforts legal, but we think these are ugly plays. And they’re an insult to the defense, whose job is to keep ball carriers out of the end zone. They fulfill that task, but all their effort goes for naught because the ball carrier was able to whoosh a vapor trail in the end zone’s ether.

It’s a tough call. We understand the apparent logic of the decision to award a touchdown based on forward progress. That’s how plays are ruled between the goal lines. We think things should change when the end zones are involved. End zones are where points are earned, and to us earning points demands a higher level of execution. Waving footballs above the end zone is not a satisfying way to see an offensive drive conclude. See what you think.

SVP: Forward progress?

ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt is a smart guy whose opinions we respect a great deal. Here he wonders why Jalen Hurts is granted immunity from a fumble caused by the Giants’ Kayvon Thibodeaux (5).

Was Hurts down? He was flopped on top of some of his offensive linemen, but his body was still in motion, still making what appears to be forward progress. 

But, as what happens when the ball in a runner’s hand breaks the plane of a goal line, the play is over. The world stops. No matter if a defender whacks a ball carrier at the goal line and prevents him from reaching the end zone, that split second spent in the end zone’s airspace is golden. That is a huge, and not entirely logical, advantage for the offense.