BUF@NYJ: Ball hitting pylon = touchdown

“Josh Allen understanding [that] ball hitting pylon equals touchdown,” explains TV analyst Charles Davis as replays show Allen churning up the left sideline on a 36-yard run, finally spearing a pylon with the ball in his outstretched hands.

What Davis says is true, though the NFL Rulebook contains some contrasting (i.e., confounding) language on pylons that makes it tough for anyone to know what we should believe when it comes to these bright orange objects. We try to decipher it in our article on the puzzle of the pylon.

Here’s a short version:

The Rulebook tells us a touchdown is scored when “A ball in player possession touches the pylon.” Further, with self-important capital letters, it states “The Goal Line and the pylons are in the End Zone.”

Yet the Field Markings section provides this illuminating fact: “Pylons must be placed at inside edges of white lines (of the end zone and goal line) and should not touch the surface of the actual playing field itself.”

Does that not sound like a contradiction? The pylon Allen crashes into is clearly positioned on the sideline (out of bounds) and not touching “the surface of the actual playing field itself” (inbounds territory).

So why does a player earn a touchdown for hitting an object that is positioned out of bounds? This seems like a blatant contradiction to us — or as our grandparents were fond of saying, a bunch of hooey.

Strange but true. We don’t think this bang-the-pylon interpretation is a good rule. And we don’t think Allen, who lands out of bounds at the end of his run, should have been handed six points for his efforts. What nonsense. What a bunch of hooey. Hocus Bogus rating: 5

CAR@CIN: Burrowing Joe Burrow

This brief quarterback sneak concludes with Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow lying atop of a cluster of blockers and defenders. Burrow never makes contact with the end zone until a few beats after refs’ whistles blow the play dead. If they were using our rule, this is not a score. To claim a touchdown, you must touch the end zone.

You want six points, the biggest payoff in the game? Then you make the effort to contact the end zone. Can’t make that happen with a quarterback sneak? Then call a different play. Earn those six points. Rating: 3

CBS Sports

LV@JAX: Oopsie-dropsey; still good for 6

The break-the-plane rule has bailed out who knows how many runners who lose their grip on the ball before they make contact with the end zone.

Because they are perceived to have entered the end zone’s airspace before the ball got away, they get credit for a touchdown instead of a fumble — all because the break-the-plane rule artificially terminates a play, calling it over the moment tall gouges the Great Invisible Plane. Other than a field goal or point-after try, we can’t think of a play that ends without a player being ruled down. So weird.

Jacksonville’s Travis Etienne, Jr., gets the benefit of this curious call when he apparently breaks the plane (and even that is not totally clear to us) before the Raiders’ Maxx Crosby (98) punches the ball loose. If we were in the replay booth, we would rule Etienne never contacted the end zone, so no TD. But the Jags did recover, so make it second-and-goal just inside the 1. Rating: 4

How it should be: Make end zone contact

You think players would not easily adapt to our rule where they would be required to make end zone contact in order to earn a touchdown? Not us. If our rule was enacted, players would be quick to abandon their pylon wave-overs and other shortcuts they’ve mastered during the Break-The-Plane Era.

Check out Rhamondre Stevenson’s foot awareness at the pylon after catching this Week 9 toss from Mac Jones. He gauges his whereabouts, targets the end zone, adjusts his feet, and sidesteps into the end zone. No question that he’s in. This is how it should be done. Applause meter: 5

How it should be: Boom goes Cordarrelle

Did Joe Burrow’s short-yardage sneak shown above seem a little lame to you? It did to us. Football’s most memorable plays have an explosive quality to them, such as this Week 9 surge vs. the Chargers by Atlanta’s Cordarrelle Paterson.

Patterson’s run offers an impressive demonstration of Fudd’s First Law of Opposition — If you push something hard enough, it will fall over. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a football move.

Our rule, we hope, will minimize, maybe eliminate, the persistent creep of cheap scores and instead open the door for much more interesting plays such as this. Applause meter: 5