Week 6 Officiating Issues

[Bobref]

Post your questions, observations, heck, even your complaints here. Try and keep the “they sucked” comments to a minimum. Provide as much detail as possible. Who knows? You might learn something!

[Coach Murray]

Does an interior lineman need to have a jersey numbered between 50 and 79?

[Bobref]

5 minutes ago, Coach Murray said:

Does an interior lineman need to have a jersey numbered between 50 and 79?

Technically, no. We can get complicated with what down it is and whether we're in scrimmage kick formation if you want. But on a basic scrimmage play the offense is required to have 5 players on the line numbered 50-79. #23 can legally play guard if you want, although he's ineligible by position. But as long as you have 5 numbered 50-79 somewhere on the line of scrimmage, you're legal.

[Coach Murray]

2 hours ago, Bobref said:

Technically, no. We can get complicated with what down it is and whether we're in scrimmage kick formation if you want. But on a basic scrimmage play the offense is required to have 5 players on the line numbered 50-79. #23 can legally play guard if you want, although he's ineligible by position. But as long as you have 5 numbered 50-79 somewhere on the line of scrimmage, you're legal.

So if an eligible number is playing guard, then an ineligible number has to be somewhere else on the los?

[Bobref]

54 minutes ago, Coach Murray said:

So if an eligible number is playing guard, then an ineligible number has to be somewhere else on the los?

Yes. You need 5 ##50-79. You can put them anywhere on the LOS you want.

[Coach Murray]

Thanks for the info.  Great as always.

[JustRules]

A common intentional formation some teams will use is to have the T as an end and two eligible numbers on the other side with one covering the other. Let's say you have the following numbers on the LOS:

82  22  54  57   62   68   71

This is a legal formation. 82 and 22 may be out wide with other players all tight. By definition #22 is an interior lineman even though he's split wide with the eligible number 82.