Illegal Forward Pass

The last play in the SF-NYG game played on 9/5/02 had a very interesting penalty. The play started with :05 remaining, NYG possession, Giants trailing by 3 on the NYG 22. Collins completes a pass to Barber, who laterals it to Dixon at the NYG 30. Dixon runs forward five yards, and as he was getting tackled, pitched the ball forward. The game clock expired during the play.

The referees threw a flag, but that wasn't covered by the TV broadcasters, who immediately cut away to on field coach and player interviews. This meant the DC couldn't determine if a penalty had been assessed. The NYG stats crew entered an Illegal Forward Pass (IFP) penalty into GSIS, and we confirmed this with the NFL Officiating department after the game was over.

The IFP penalty's an Other spot penalty, so that all of the stats on the play count up to the point when the penalty occurred. Collins gets credit for a pass attempt and a pass completion, but Dixon does not get credit for a pass attempt, by rule.

The timing of this penalty is interesting. If a penalty is assessed on the offensive team, the offense gains yardage, and time expires in the half, the penalty is always accepted, with ZERO penalty yards. If the offense does not gain yardage on the play and time expires in the half, the penalty is always declined. It's important to note the automatic nature of the enforcement. The officials do not consult the defensive team to ask if they want to accept or decline the penalty.

Exception: if the defense intercepts the ball, and returns the interception for a touchdown, the penalty is automatically declined. The player who threw the IFP for an interception gets credit for a pass attempt and an interception. The Team Stats page of the Gamebook has a statistic for total number of offensive plays for each team. This statistic is a summation of the number of rushing plays, passing plays, and sacks. Since this play had a pass completion and a pass interception, it counts as TWO offensive plays for the team. Elias has confirmed that this is correct.

If the defense does not return the interception for a touchdown, no credit should be given for the interception. The penalty is automatically accepted; essentially the play is 'over' at the time the penalty is incurred. If the game clock did not expire, the interception stands. Jon Berger of the New York Giants has pointed out that if in this case, the defense then throws a lateral or (illegal) forward pass which is intercepted by the original offense, that player will get credit for a pass attempt and a pass interception, incrementing his team’s offensive play counts without his team’s offense even being on the field.

If the penalty is accepted, and you wanted to add a Pass Incompletion event to describe what happened in the play, you must enter the INC event after the penalty event to avoid having an incorrect pass attempt statistic awarded to the penalized player (example ). The INC event cannot be entered if the penalty was declined. You would have to describe the pass incompletion with a comment. I can’t think of a situation where the defense would rationally choose to decline this penalty.

If an IFP penalty occurs within the last two minutes of a half, and the referees determine that the player intentionally tried to stop the clock by throwing an incomplete forward pass, or fumbling the ball out of bounds, the Illegal Attempt to Conserve Time clause kicks in. This isn’t a separate penalty. When the referees rule that the offensive team is guilty of this, they will take 10 seconds off the game clock in addition to the five yards for the IFP penalty. In my opinion, the play end time remains the same, and the play start time is adjusted to be 10 seconds later, causing a mismatch between one play’s end time and the next play’s start time. GSIS doesn’t check for this condition. There’s no formal ruling on this as far as I can determine. If the play’s over with 10 or fewer seconds remaining on the game clock, this can cause the game to end. The offense gets credit for the number of seconds removed from the game clock for their total time of possession, and for the last drive’s time of possession.