Officiating video: player ejections in replay, illegal snaps

Senior vice president of officiating Al Riveron released the weekly officiating video today. (video below)

Disqualifications

In it he covered player disqualifications with an example from the Panthers-Steelers Thursday Night Football game where Panthers safety Eric Reid was disqualified for an unnecessary roughness hit to quarterback Ben Roethlisberger when he hit Roethlisberger in the head as Roethlisberger slid to give himself up. The officials then ejected Reid for the hit. The play was reviewed in officiating central in New York but they are only reviewing to see if there is contact or not and not ruling on the ejection.

Scores by defense on PAT

In the Colts-Jaguars game, the Colts were able to score on a blocked PAT when the defender recovered the block and returned it for a score. However, the two-point play was overturned due to an illegal block below the waist during the return by the defense. During a change of possession, no team may initiate a block below the waist. The Jaguars accepted the penalty to negate the score, so it was not enforced on the kickoff. 

Illegal motion by the quarterback

Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield was under center and then walked away from the ball simulating confusion between him and the sideline. As he was moving toward the side line, the ball was snapped to the running back. As we covered this week. the play was flagged and did not count because Mayfield was not reset for at least one second in the back field before the snap.

Use of the helmet

In the Jaguars-Colts game, Riveron gave a textbook example of the new “use of the helmet” rule when Jaguars linebacker Myles Jack was flagged for lowering his helmet to initiate contact. The contact is foul if a player lowers his head to initiate contact anywhere on an opponent’s body, not just the head or neck area.