High School football question

I've wondered this myself. High School needs a targeting rule. I don't see much high school but as far as I know there is no targeting foul like there is in college.

 

I did the same. A boss told me that was wrong, but it seemed weird.

 

At a shop I was at, a no score came in with a team posting minus-108 rushing yards. My editor called the stringer, who picked up by saying, “yeah, that stat is right.”

 

Three others that are ridiculous:
1) Pass interference is not an automatic first down. It's just 15 yards. So if you get a PI on third-and-20, it's only third-and-5 instead of first-and-10.
2) That any little twitch into the neutral zone is offsides. Hate, hate, hate that call. If the defense makes contact, or causes the offense to move, or passes an offensive player on the line of scrimmage, fine. But the ones where the defense flinches at the hard count but still gets back without doing any of that stuff, need to go.
3) More of a pet peeve than a rule. Our state mandates heat timeouts at the 6-minute mark of each quarter in August and September. I am so sick of seeing officials treat that 6:00 on the clock as an absolute deadline. If there's a change of possession or a stoppage at 6:05, they'll let the offense run a play and then take the timeout so you get two stoppages instead of one. Or if the offense is at the line about to snap the ball at 6:00 they'll blow the whistle instead of taking the timeout after the play. So much stupidity that breaks up the flow of the game.

 

Next year, Massachusetts is switching to NFHS rules. They're also switching to NFHS rules in baseball and volleyball.

One of the reasons the MIAA cited was a concern about lawsuits. I'm not sure I understand that. Is the argument that if somebody got seriously hurt playing NCAA rules in football or whatever, the school or the MIAA could be sued because the rules weren't as safe as they should have been?

Could it be same in baseball, where maybe a kid blows out his arm because there's no pitch count rule in the Official Rules of Baseball that the MIAA currently uses?

 

I count them as runs, then add the penalty, even if the call was behind the line of scrimmage. So, yeah, sometimes I gotta give some poor guy a negative-yard run because the foul happened behind the line of scrimmage.

What gets really weird is on an incomplete pass with a holding penalty behind the line of scrimmage. I give the quarterback a rushing loss on a play on which he threw a pass.

I have no idea if that's right or wrong. I started doing it because if the penalty is 10 yards, the other yards have to be accounted for somehow. Nobody's told me otherwise.

Officials around here walk off plenty of 6- and 11-yard penalties, anyway.

 

I hate the stat where we have to credit a passing play when the QB flips the ball forward to a receiver/back who's hauling ass on a jet sweep. I understand that the QB gets an incomplete pass credited if it's dropped. But the guys are literally 1-2 yards apart and you hardly ever/never see one dropped. Sometimes the QB will get a 60-yard passing TD on something nothing more than a handoff, and then we'll look at gaudy passing numbers because of plays like this.

 

We had a team that used shovel passes extensively. Even though it all goes as passing yardage, the QB flips the ball 1 or 2 yards, so the stats are deceiving. One of our prep writers used to keep separate stats for shovel passes and regular downfield passes, just for the sake of his story. One game, the QB completed 57 of 60 passes. One guys said, "Most high school quarterbacks can't complete 57 of 60 handoffs." This QB was a pretty controversial player (multiple transfers in high school). He went to Cal, then left and wound up at C.W. Post. He went to camp with the Falcons.

 

I want to argue back against this one.

I'm coaching my son's 9U tackle team, and we run the unbalanced Single Wing. We go on the same snap count every down - "Everybody Ready! .... Down! ... SetGo." We never change it up.

But literally the very first play we learned this season - in the first 10 minutes of the first practice - is "No play." We come out, we get in our stance, "Everybody Ready! ... Down! ... SetGo!" and everyone stays right in their stance. It's been good for a free five yards almost every single time we run it (We've false started on it twice, and we have an audible for the one or two times the other team hasn't jumped).

It's silly, but it's really important for us. When you go on the same count all the time, at some point the defense is going to figure it out and start jumping our count. Then we run "No Play" a few times (the worst was the time we ran it successfully three straight plays ) and the defense gets off that. Most importantly: Watching our video, after we've "No Played" a few times, our offensive line starts getting a big edge on the defensive line - the bad guys are still in their stance trying to figure out if the ball actually moved this time.

If kids are allowed to "get back" after jumping offsides but not making contact, there becomes little disincentive to trying to jump the snap count, especially for defenders outside of the free blocking area, where they're not going to bump into anyone. Ceding a one-step head start to edge rushers/contain men is a massive, massive advantage.

 

I get where you're coming from for a 9U team, but by the time you get to high school you can start changing the snap count once in a while to accomplish the same thing. Just like in baseball, how you have to have two or three sets of signs for when the team picks up on it. Strategize a little bit.
What I really hate is the five free yards for what amounts to nothing. If a defensive player establishes themselves in the neutral zone and has to take a step to get back, that's one thing. I'd even be OK keeping the current rule for standing players like edge rushing linebackers.
I'm more peeved with the flinches where maybe the defensive lineman's shoulder goes into the neutral zone but they don't make contact, get back, and still are flagged anyway. Too many high school teams have plays similar to your "No Play" as part of their regular offense, not just for special situations like third-and-short. At that level it feels cheap.