Emphasis on ineligible man down field penalty
 

I've never seen so many ineligible man down field penalties in my life, so I did some digging and it seems like the NFL has either told the refs to watch out for it, more teams are running RPO's, or something else I can't think of.

So far this year there has been a total of 95 ineligible man down field penalties in 174 games. How's that line up with previous years?

2021 285 games and 69 penalties
2020 269 games and 49 penalties
2019 267 games and 55 penalties
2018 267 games and 29 penalties
2017 267 games and 19 penalties
2016 267 games and 33 penalties

No idea why 2020 has 269 games, but that's what nflpenalties.con says.

So the NFL is on pace for 156 ineligible man down field penalties.

In past years it seemed like that penalty was very rarely called and now you see it every other game. What gives?

That call was BS... Defender pulled him in to the penalty range

No one else wanna talk about this?

Seems like another rule that is enforced rather informally and randomly to affect game scores.

Most people don't know what it means exactly which is why nobody is talking about it

I dunno. The rule means that big offensive lineman can't be downfield presumably blocking or getting in the way on pass plays before the pass has been thrown. What is it, 2 yards downfield or something? I feel like there are a lot more dudes breaking the pocket and passing on broken plays, so linemen are finding themselves downfield more that before.

It's a pain in the ass, but it's the rule no?

Either you did it or you didn’t

It's pretty basic, and if you're a Chiefs fan you should know because we get called for this eleventy jillion times a game.

Mahomes double clutched, which threw off the timing, which caused Smith to drift up to engage the next defender, making him "IDF." Not that big a deal. Nobody really effed up; just bad luck someone was in the passing lane Mahomes wanted to throw through.

Which one of these shouldn’t have been called?

eagles seem to get lots of them because hurts is scrambling out of rpo

This rule doesn’t bother me that much because I think for a few years things got out of control with running QBs. Too much of a defensive disadvantage. But yeah, the selective enforcement isn’t great.

Eh, it makes sense that it is called more with more RPOs being run. Just a timing thing. Sucks when it happens, but I almost never get upset about it.

I'm not saying they shouldn't have been called. Just that they're calling it a lot more than they ever have and I'm curious as to why or what has changed.

There was a TD the Chiefs scored against the Bills taken off the board for an OL only 2 yards down field instead of 3.