Pass Interference

A famous coach; may be Woody Hayes, Bernie Moore, or Darrell Royal once said; when you throw a pass only three things can happen, and two of them are bad. Well, there is a fourth option, a flag for pass interference and there are good and bad associated with it for an offense. We cover the history of pass interference rules in this episode.

Some of the biggest calls by officials in the history of football have come down to the rules on the foul of pass interference. There are two varieties; one committed by an offensive player and the other by a defensive player. The rules for both have morphed with the game over the last century-plus and we wanted to take a look at the history of the rule.

We cannot start a conversation about Pass Interference without at least acknowledging the adoption of the forward pass in football in 1906. The pass was supported by some such as John Heisman, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Bob Zuppke, and others while opposition to this concept was mainly from the old guard of football powerhouses in the East like Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Walter Camp of Yale. We know the story, severe brutality in the game which produced severe injuries and even death of players prompted President Theodore Roosevelt to issue a request that the football rules body tame the game. The forward pass was one of many items on the agenda to open up the game, and try and make it safer for participants.

The forward pass was pretty much unrecognizable to the modern football eye until about 1912 according to author Timothy P. Brown in his very informative book, How Football Became Football. To get the legalization of throwing the ball forward, proponents had to appease the concept's opposition by having strict rules on its use. Quirks such as an incomplete pass being a turnover, as well as restricting how far a throw could go and where it could be tossed from were obstacles to its use indeed.

This didn’t fix everything wrong with football brutality as a spike in fatalities in 1909 led to another round of reforms that further eased restrictions on the forward pass and formed the foundation of the modern sport.

Football could not survive without balanced attacks between the offensive and defensive sides of the ball. The football minds of 1910 saw the passing game as one tool that could be tweaked to retain the balance needed. 

Interference is addressed

The Rules Committees decided that the passes would be effective but that they had to be thrown from five yards behind and could travel no further than twenty yards beyond the line of scrimmage. This conservative reform by today’s standards was more than made up in the revisions to the pass interference rules. His first rule on this subject is a dandy and is best described by the actual verbiage used in 1910.

"No player of either side while in the act of catching a forward pass shall be tackled, thrown, pushed or pulled, shouldered, or straight-armed until he shall have caught the ball and taken one or more step in any direction, provided that any such interference which is incidental to a bonafide attempt to catch or intercept the pass shall not come within this prohibition. Note:-If a forward pass is merely touched or fumbled by a player, no player of either side may even interfere with an opponent until the ball is actually in the possession of the player except in a bonafide attempt to get at the ball."

This rule is quite interesting when examined. On one hand, it says the first person to touch a forward pass has every right to try and obtain it into his possession without the hindrance of being touched by anyone until he does possess the ball and takes one step towards any direction. This is of course unless that hindering player was trying to get at the ball. Does this sound familiar? Yes, this is most likely where the rule premise of playing the ball and not the man came into being, at the very infancy of the forward pass itself. We have since the inception of the interference rule tweaked it a bit by allowingcontact by an opponent to a potential receiver who has merely touched the ball but other than that modification the rules still pretty much stand the same today as they did almost 100 years ago.

Offensive restrictions addressed

The passing rule revisions had other solid roots in 1910 that are still the basis for rules in the twenty-first century. A revision of 1910 made it illegal for offensive players to make any contact beyond the line of scrimmage during a passing play until the ball was caught by any player. Again the premise of catching the ball has been replaced by that of simply touching the ball, but this is the foundation of the restrictions of contact by offensive players beyond the neutral zone for forward passes that go beyond the zone. This rule had a few exceptions in 1910 though that included allowing offensive contact downfield in an attempt to advance the ball by running after a catch and in the actual attempt to catch the pass. The other exception was after the play had gone twenty yards beyond the line of scrimmage the defensive players were allowed to use their hands to push and pull opponents out of the way to get at the ball or the man carrying it. An interesting note to all of this is that a player was not considered to have crossed the line of scrimmage until he was passed every defensive player who had started on the line of scrimmage at the play’s onset.

Only offensive players who started on their team's end of the line or in the backfield were allowed to touch a forward pass. Also, only the team that put the ball in play on that particular scrimmage play could attempt a forward pass.

Defensive restrictions and exceptions

The players of the defense were under almost the same restrictions as the offensive players on a forward pass beyond the line of scrimmage due to the 1910 revisions. They could only contact an offensive player who possessed the ball and had taken one step unless they were making a play on the ball or trying to get to the man with the ball. They also could not contact offensive players during a kick play from scrimmage unless it traveled at least twenty yards beyond the line of scrimmage. They could make this contact on scrimmage kicks shorter than twenty yards provided that their hands were close to their bodies in an attempt to ward off and obstruct opponents from getting to a player who was carrying the ball.

Referee Magazine has a fantastic article written by Jeffrey Stern on pass https://en.wikipedia.org">Ultimate Guide on Pass Interference in football says that the 1909 ansd 1910 revisions stated that pass interference was only possible 20 yards or less from the line of scrimmage, however, that rule stipulation was repealed in 1912. The initial penalty for defensive interference was 10 yards from the previous spot and a first down. On the other hand, Offensive interference resulted in a loss of down only in that era. Still a pretty severe penalty at a time when yardage gain was at a premium and every down counted.

Walter Camp, one of the pioneers of the game, lobbied the committee several times to modify interference rules. The man was at every Committee gathering on the rules and even passed away at on in March of 1925. His pleas at the 1916 meeting focused on the proliferation of interference by defenders more than 15 yards beyond the previous spot. It sounds crazy but there was a big loophole in the rule, because of the enforcement of the foul at the previous spot, a defense would be at a better advantage to foul rather than allow a completion. But it was not until the next year that Camp finally persuaded the committee to have the ball awarded to the offense at the spot of the foul (which is the current NFL rule).

Offensive interference was addressed again in 1922, when the penalty was increased to 15 yards from the previous spot along with loss of down.

Until 1923, any offensive player could commit what amounted to interference until the pass was thrown. A rule change made it illegal for team A to interfere once the ball was snapped and was aimed at eliminating the “pick” play that had been perfected by Ray Morrison, the coach at Southern Methodist. A 1928 NCAA rule added a key element of pass interference in football as it was only for passes thrown beyond the original line of scrimmage. An automatic first down was added to the penalty for defensive interference in 1953 by the college rules makers. The NFL soon followed suit.

The rules on interference really did not change much for the next couple of decades. 

Swooping changes started in 1974 when the NFL restricted the amount of contact that a defender could have with a potential offensive receiver. Before then, a defensive back push around and really get physical with a wideout not just at the line of scrimmage, but all the way down the field while they were in their routes. The League upped the ante by adding more restrictions on downfield contact in 1977 when they allowed defenders to make contact with a WR only once. The rules would be tweaked once again in 1978 when defenders were able to maintain contact with an eligible receiver only within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. It was illegal contact after this initial five-yard zone. It was the beginning of the modern NFL illegal contact rule. Enforcement was sparse though in these formative years, and maybe by design. Slow emphasis and usage of the rule educated and eased the restrictions on the players, coaches, and fans. It wasn’t until about 1996, when the NFL announced they'd actually enforce the illegal contact penalty, created in 1978, more stringently than before.

In 1995, the NFL revised a rule that allowed a receiver that was forced out of bounds by a defender to return in bounds and make a play. This helped eliminate the move of "chucking" a WR out of bounds to remove him from a play. 

So what does the NFL rule on OPI and DPI say today? According to NFL Operations:

“It is pass interference by either team when any act by a player more than one yard beyond the line of scrimmage significantly hinders an eligible player’s opportunity to catch the ball. Pass interference can only occur when a forward pass is thrown from behind the line of scrimmage, regardless of whether the pass is legal or illegal, or whether it crosses the line.

Defensive pass interference rules apply from the time the ball is thrown until the ball is touched. See Article 2 for prohibited acts while the ball is in the air.

Offensive pass interference rules apply from the time the ball is snapped until the ball is touched.”

The banner photo is of Wide receiver James Jones of San José State catches touchdown pass against Stanford. San José won 35–34, contributed by user Sjsualum, Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

A Very Special thanks to information obtained from the following brilliant internet sites: On This Day Sports, NFL Operations, the Sports Reference's family of website databases & Stathead.com