Link: Patriots' Trick Play That Got John Harbaugh Mad That's Similar To Bama's Trick Play

TIDE-HSV

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Thanks for the info Earle..When a Ref notifies the defensive captain, is that when the D starts to adjust & move into another formation, it just never dawned on me, the offense had to let the refs know who's ineligible & then the refs notifies the defensive captain..
I may be totally wrong, but I don't think in college there's any obligation to notify the other team. In fact, I think I remember that there's no real duty to notify the linesman. It's just convenient to do so. The eligibility is determined by the positioning of the team, not the notification...
 

day-day

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They covered Vereen, who was ineligible. He was in the slot but was on the los with a receiver beyond him on the los, automatically making him ineligible. Baltimore could've recognized that without him reporting himself ineligible. Then you just find the last guy on the los on the other side and he is an eligible receiver.
This was my thought as well and makes sense. Two things I don't like about it are: 1) the defensive players don't have the best angle to judge whether one wideout is truly up on the los and 2) the defense is relying on the referees to also make the proper judgement and do not overlook the alignment and miss what is taking place.
 

RTR91

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They covered Vereen, who was ineligible. He was in the slot but was on the los with a receiver beyond him on the los, automatically making him ineligible. Baltimore could've recognized that without him reporting himself ineligible. Then you just find the last guy on the los on the other side and he is an eligible receiver.
You expect the defense to do all of that within 1 to 2 seconds of a team lining up at the LOS?
 

TIDE-HSV

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Re: Patriots' Trick Play That Got John Harbaugh Mad &That's Similar To Bama's Trick

Now there is a guy who unquestionably does not need to buy a vowel...
That reminded me of something I read a long time ago. It was a white guy conversing with a native Hawaiian. The WG was asking about the name of some specific object and the HG spelled it in English phonetically. I contained a sound, "th," I think. The WG commented that he didn't think Hawaiian had that sound. The HG replied that they had always had it, that it was the missionaries who decided they didn't... ;)
 

scrodz

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Totally off the top of my head, but I think you notify in college mainly to avoid the inadvertent flag. We got flagged on a TD, IIRC, it may have been the 2009 NCG, because we didn't notify and the other officials had the linesman pick up the flag...
Wasn't that the Andre screen? I though the flag was picked up because the pass was behind the LOS.
 

ALA2262

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Re: Patriots' Trick Play That Got John Harbaugh Mad &That's Similar To Bama's Trick

I made that clear - you give the defense time to identify the player on the field. Maybe a 5 second delay? Instead they let the Pats rush to the LOS and run a play before the information could be properly communicated throughout the defense with the player identified.

Pretty simple, and something that happens regularly on special teams plays. The refs allowed themselves to be rushed by the Pats offense, just as college refs allow themselves to be rushed by HUNH offenses.
The Pats ran the play 3 times. According to Peter King; seven, ten, and seven seconds expired between the announcement of the ineligible receiver and the snap. Here is what he had to say:

The New England play could not have been more of a carbon copy if Alabama coach Nick Saban or his offensive coordinator, Lane Kiffin, had flown to New England last week to help offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels install it.

I was in Gillette Stadium Saturday night for three such plays run by the Patriots on the same third-quarter scoring drive, but I didn’t fully understand what had happened during the game. I didn’t understand the genesis of it until a friend of mine said it was what Alabama did to LSU in overtime this season. I found the play on YouTube, watched it, and the light bulb went off: Belichick and Saban are very close. There is no doubt in my mind, based on the duplication of the play, that the Patriots got this play from Alabama. And good for them. It’s perfectly legal, despite Baltimore’s protestations to the contrary, and though officiating czar Dean Blandino told me Sunday the league is going to examine the play (actually, the Patriots completed three passes, for 11, 14 and 16 yards on the three plays they ran), what rule can the NFL change?

Baltimore coach John Harbaugh protested the play because he thought the Ravens weren’t given time to “match up” after the Patriots made their switch. Here’s how the rule reads: “If a substitution is made by the offense, the offense shall not be permitted to snap the ball until the defense has been permitted to respond with its substitutions. While in the process of a substitution (or simulated substitution), the offense is prohibited from rushing quickly to the line of scrimmage and snapping the ball in an obvious attempt to cause a defensive foul (i.e., too many men on the field). If, in the judgment of the officials, this occurs, the following procedure will apply:

“(a) The Umpire will stand over the ball until the Referee deems that the defense has had a reasonable time to complete its substitutions.

“(b) If a play takes place and a defensive foul for too many players on the field results, no penalties will be enforced, except for personal fouls and unsportsmanlike conduct, and the down will be replayed. At this time, the Referee will notify the head coach that any further use of this tactic will result in a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct.”

I timed the three plays in question to see if Baltimore had been unfairly disadvantaged by the Patriot ploy, using NFL Game Rewind as my resource. Playing the NBC telecast back, I clocked the amount of time between referee Bill Vinovich’s in-stadium announcement of the “non-eligible player” (it sounded like that was what Vinovich called the spread-wide faux fifth lineman). By my count, seven, 10 and seven seconds elapsed between the announcements and the snap of the ball.

“The whole issue with Baltimore,’’ Blandino said, “is they felt they weren’t given enough time [to match up]. We will review the three plays, but it appears from a mechanical standpoint that the announcement was made properly, the defense was notified, and the proper mechanics were executed.’’

As Blandino explained, the offense must have seven men on the line of scrimmage before the snap of the ball. The outside two players are eligible receivers. In this case, wideout Brandon LaFell was split left and wideout Julian Edelman split right, with Edelman outside Vereen, who was the ineligible fifth offensive lineman. “Everyone on the line between the two outside receivers, all five other players, have to be ineligible,’’ said Blandino. (This, of course, doesn’t count receivers or backs in the slot, a step or two behind the line.)

There’s another advantage to this play, from New England’s standpoint. On the play I described, three Ravens—safety Anthony Levine and linebackers C.J. Mosley and Daryl Smith—were pointing and shifting and moving with uncertainty just before and as the ball was snapped. On one of the other plays with the four-man line, Terrell Suggs shifted just before the snap and wasn’t ready to rush at the snap of the ball.

My feeling is Baltimore should have had a coach upstairs identify the New England weirdness as the announcement was made, and note that a tight end was playing left tackle. A coach upstairs should have the power to say in the headset to Harbaugh, “Call a timeout! New England’s doing something we can’t identify!” Or something like that.

But it’s not up to the referee to give the defense an unlimited amount of time. Seven seconds is enough for a defense to match up. In this case it was simply a great use of trickery by the Patriots, and the players weren’t giving much away in the locker room after the game. Asked about the formation, several replied vaguely, and with no details about what happened, or when it was practiced. Belichick has trained them well.
 

CrimsonForce

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Re: Patriots' Trick Play That Got John Harbaugh Mad &That's Similar To Bama's Trick

So, um, they just did it again! Nate Soldier just caught his first ever pass, and it was a TD to put the Pats up 24 - 7.
I can't believe the colts weren't ready for that. Surely they watched the film of the Ravens game..
 

Chukker Veteran

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Of all things...now everybody is upset that the ball the Patriots used was underinflated.

Similar to how people got upset that the ball was underinflated when Kiffin was the USC head coach. :)

I don't think Saban tipped the Pats off to let the air out of the ball similar to what happened with Kiffin, but it is an odd coincidence.
 

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