NFL adds new 15-yard penalty for snow removal
Somewhere, Mark Henderson is shaking his head.
Henderson, who etched his name into football history in 1982 when he used his snowplow to clear a place for John Smith to score the only points in a 3-0 win for the Patriots over the Dolphins, just saw his act officially outlawed by the NFL.
Football Zebras reports that Rule 13-1-1 has been amended, and the amendment is a swipe at what had been unspoken tradition since that fateful day in 1982.
Specifically, the text reads, “It is impermissible for the grounds crew or other team personnel to clear away snow for a Try kick, field goal, punt, or kickoff.”
The prohibition on snow-clearing previously had applied to grounds crews as part of the league’s Gameday Operations Manual, but that manual technically did not apply on the field as it is not considered part of the official rulebook of the sport, merely as guidelines for support staff.
Still, referees could and did warn players that clearing snow was regarded as an operations violation.
The amendment to Rule 13-1-1 moves that snow-clearing prohibition into the realm of actual gameplay violations and adds a 15-yard penalty, enforceable immediately and without warning, if anyone other than the players on the field try to clear snow. Teams are immediately docked the yardage and presumably pushed back out of field goal range in the process.
What’s more, this also clearly defines that no, teams cannot clear a spot, get their three points and take the penalty on the ensuing kickoff, as is the case, for example, in the infamous No Fun League’s touchdown celebrations.
Curiously, this is not the only case in sports where snow is mentioned as a prohibition in the rules.
Hockey has a wonderful rule wherein a goalie, vacating the net at the end of a game in favor of an extra skater, is not allowed to leave any obstacles in front of the net that would prevent an empty-net goal from sliding into the net.
This, and it is explicitly defined in the hockey rule book, includes a “pile of snow.”
It’s all thanks to Hall of Fame coach Roger Neilson, and he and Mark Henderson are in that sense spiritual brothers, guys for whom if they hadn’t broken the sport with a stroke of genius, the rules they inspired might still be unclosed loopholes.
More recently, in Week 14 of 2017, a snowy game in Buffalo between the Bills and the Colts featured a pair of missed field goals.
During a timeout, the Colts sent their sideline attendants out onto the field to help players clear the spot for an attempted extra point.
Referee Brad Allen chased the sideline personnel back across the line into their own lane, but he had no power under the rules to assess a penalty.
So now, players are going to have to do the dirty work of kicking snow aside or scooping it up with their hands with no outside assistance.
And somewhere, a guy who made a name for himself while on work release from a Massachusetts prison can only laugh at a league that still hasn’t figured out an effective solution to the problem of snow in a game played in cold-weather cities in December and January.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
