Dear Sports Fan

Dear Sports Fan,

What the heck is a “football move”? I think I understand that a wide receiver making a catch has to catch the ball and then make a “football move” to get credit for it but I don’t get what a “football move” is. I mean, we’re watching football players play football, right? Isn’t basically everything a “football move”? Isn’t the catch itself a “football move”?

Thanks,
Alexander

Dear Alexander,

You ask a very reasonable question. It’s one that puzzles most football fans and even some football players. The phrase “football move” doesn’t actually appear in the NFL rule-books at all but it is used popularly to explain a rule that dictates whether a player has caught the football or not. This rule has always been a little controversial and it became even more so when it virtually decided a playoff game between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys earlier this year. In plain English, the rule states that in order to be considered a completed catch, a player has to catch the ball and maintain control over it long enough to do something else before the play is considered to be a completed catch. Here’s the rule in NFLese:

A forward pass is complete (by the offense) or intercepted (by the defense) if a player, who is inbounds:
(a) secures control of the ball in his hands or arms prior to the ball touching the ground; and
(b) touches the ground inbounds with both feet or with any part of his body other than his hands; and
(c) maintains control of the ball long enough, after (a) and (b) have been fulfilled, to enable him to perform any act
common to the game (i.e., maintaining control long enough to pitch it, pass it, advance with it, or avoid or ward off an
opponent, etc.).
Note 1: It is not necessary that he commit such an act, provided that he maintains control of the ball long enough to do so.
Note 2: If a player has control of the ball, a slight movement of the ball will not be considered a loss of possession. He must
lose control of the ball in order to rule that there has been a loss of possession.

I know, I know, the NFL is run by lawyers with a distinct flair for the obtuse. Still, the rule is actually not that hard to understand. I’ll do my best to explain it.

The first thing to understand is what this rule is attempting to do and why they are important. This rule is tries to set an objective line between a play that is not a completed pass and one that is. This is important because there are four possible outcomes when a quarterback throws his teammate the ball and they are widely varied in terms of their effect on the game:

1. An incomplete pass — if the quarterback throws the ball and no one catches it — means that the play stops and the offense gets the ball back where they started that play only instead of first down, now it’s second or instead of third, now it’s fourth.
2. A complete pass — when the quarterback throws the ball and his teammate catches it — means that the play continues until the receiver of the ball runs out-of-bounds or is tackled.
3. A complete pass followed by a fumble — after the quarterback’s teammate catches the ball, he runs around and then drops the ball — the play continues but it’s a free-for-all; whoever picks up the ball gets it, including the defensive team.
4. An interception — when a member of the opposing team catches the ball — the play continues and the defender can run with the ball but when he is tackled or goes out-of-bounds, his team gets to play offense.

These categories seem obvious but they get tricky at the edges. For instance, it’s intuitive that if the quarterback throws the ball and it hits the ground, it’s an incomplete pass. Likewise, if the quarterback throws the ball and it bounces off his teammates head and then hits the ground, it’s still an incomplete pass. But what if it bounces off his teammate’s hands as he’s trying to catch the ball? Still an incomplete pass but now we’re starting to feel less sure of things, right? Now, if the receiver catches the ball and runs for ten seconds, dodging defenders the whole time, and then drops the ball, that’s clearly a fumble. But what if he only runs around for five seconds? Still a fumble? What about four? What about three, two, one? Somewhere, there has to be a line between an incomplete pass and a catch followed by a fumble.

The NFL chose to define that boundary as when a player “maintains control of the ball long enough” after catching the ball and landing in-bounds to “enable him to perform any act common to the game.” Since the game in question is football, that phrase has been condensed in popular usage to a “football move.” In other words, a player has to catch the ball and hold it for long enough for him to theoretically do something else with it before it’s considered a catch. Of course, players on a football field don’t stand still very much of the time when a play is happening. This is why the last twist on this rule came into being. People don’t say that a receiver has to “catch the ball and then hold it long enough to make a football move”, they say that a player has to “catch the ball and then make a football move”. Since the NFL did not define how many seconds (or more likely tenths of a second) would be long enough to make a football move, the rule has shifted (for the purposes of reasonable enforcement) to be that a player has to demonstrate possession while he makes a football move after the catch.

I guess the only question we’re left with is “why should this be the definition of a catch?” I like to think about it like this: until a player is able to show that he’s done catching the ball and is ready and able to do something else on the field, he’s still in the process of catching the ball. Once a player is able to move on from catching the ball to dodge defenders, change direction or speed, or dive forward, then they’re done catching the ball.

Make sense? If it does, you’re ahead of everyone else. I think eventually we’ll see the NFL simply set an amount of time, probably three tenths of a second that a receiver must possess the ball before the play is considered a completed pass. That, plus biological sensors in the ball and everyone’s gloves will solve this issue for us once and for all. Until then, enjoy the debates about what exactly constitutes a “football move” and whether so-and-so made a catch or not.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

The Super Bowl is just around the corner. If you’d like to learn more about football, sign up for our Football 101 course to learn the basics of the game or Football 201 to learn all about football positions.

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a false start in football? I get that it’s a penalty against the offense and that when it happens the play stops before it even starts but what I don’t understand is why it’s called or what a team can do to avoid it.

Thanks,
Chelsea

Dear Chelsea,

You’ve got most of it already but I’ll fill in the rest as best I can. A false start is a penalty in football that can only be called against the team with possession of the ball. The penalty for a false start is that the offense has to move the ball back five yards (or half the distance to their own goal line if they are within five yards of it) and start the play over again. A false start penalizes the offense if one of their players moves in an illegal way before the ball is snapped to start the play. One thing that’s cool about the penalty is that its inflexibility exhibits and reinforces one of the primary characteristics of football: it’s stop and start, tactical nature.

As we covered in our article answering What is a snap in football? every football play begins when the center snaps the ball backwards between his legs to another player. During the time before that happens, there are a separate set of rules that dictate what the teams on the field can do. For example, the offensive team is allowed to gather to talk (called a huddle) but not if there are more than eleven people in the group. The false start is a penalty in that set of rules that dictate what a team, specifically the one with the ball, can do before the ball is snapped. Roughly speaking, the offensive team is supposed to set themselves up in a particular way, pause, and then without moving, snap the ball to start the play. As you might expect, there are some technicalities and exceptions that dictate how this must happen: there must be at least seven offensive players set up right on the line of scrimmage (where the ball is set up at the start of the play); when the ball is snapped, one and only one player is allowed to be running around and he must be moving backwards or sideways and may not be one of the seven players set up on the line of scrimmage. The false start is called when one of a variety of things happen to violate these rules:

• A player in the offensive line “moves abruptly” once they are set up. This rule is so minute that even a flinch of the head will be called a false start.
• Any player on the offense moves “in such manner as to lead defense to believe snap has started.”
• The quarterback moves or acts in a way that is an “obvious attempt to draw an opponent offside”. (on this one, you might rightly be thinking that TV commentators often talk about quarterbacks trying to draw the defense offside by shouting like they are about to start the play. This is true but because those shouts could theoretically convey information to the quarterback’s teammates, they are allowed even though we all know exactly what they’re trying to do. It’s a conundrum wrapped in an enigma.)

The false start is one of the most typical penalties in football. No single penalty defines the sport as well as the false start. If you wanted to explain football to a fan of soccer or basketball or hockey or any number of other sports, the easiest way to do it would be to say that football is like those sports except that everything stops between plays. When a player is tackled or runs out-of-bounds, the teams have forty seconds to set up again for the next play. It’s a stop-and-start game. This makes it look boring to a lot of people used to the fluidity of other sports but it’s also responsible for the complexity and tactical interest that football and really only football of all the sports has. If football is a game where the teams are supposed to stop and then set up in a static way before starting again then the false start is the penalty that makes sure the offense has really stopped before they start the next play.

The false start also represents a failure of synchronization. The players on the offensive side of a football team train tirelessly to move in exact unison. A successful offense is one that moves with precision as one unit. You’ll often see quarterbacks pass the ball to a spot, knowing that by the time the ball gets there, their teammate will be there to catch the ball. Every successful offensive play is a triumph of moving in unison. When players move out of time with each other during a play, the play usually fails. When one player moves out of sync before the play begins, it’s a false start and their whole team is penalized. One of the funniest things to see on a football field is what happens when the one player who moves out of time is the player who starts the play with the ball, the center. When this happens, all his teammates move while he stays still. The mistake is really the center’s but because the play doesn’t start until he snaps the ball, the foul is officially called on his teammates, like this:

Thanks for the question,
Ezra Fischer

The Super Bowl is just around the corner. If you’d like to learn more about football, sign up for our Football 101 course to learn the basics of the game or Football 201 to learn all about football positions.