One of the most curious moments of the Pittsburgh Steelers’ game on Sunday against the Baltimore Ravens came just before halftime when Baltimore ran a play on fourth and 2. As we later learned directly from head coach John Harbaugh and the players in question, that was never their intention, but it got former Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger thinking back to his own setup with his former center.
“The center did his head thing and when he came up, somebody for the Steelers kind of, not close to the neutral zone but took a step like they were going to”, he said on his Footbahlin podcast, referring to Ravens C Tyler Linderbaum. ILB Kwon Alexander was the player in question approaching the neutral zone. You can decide if he was offside or not. Frankly, it’s really hard to say without knowing exactly where the true line of scrimmage is.
“We used to allow [Maurkice Pouncey] to do that”, he said. “Pounce, it was on him. When we would try to draw them offsides, if someone jumped in the neutral zone, we would snap it, because we wanted the free play”.
Linderbaum said after the game that he felt Alexander was in the neutral zone, which is why he snapped it. But it’s not clear if he actually had the authority to do so in that situation. Harbaugh called it a “no-snap situation”, their only intention being to run down the clock. If they drew an offside or neutral zone infraction, so be it, but that was a close play to pull the trigger on.
For Roethlisberger’s Steelers, though, the light was always green. “Some teams put their hand out and create just a five-yard penalty, but we want the home run”, he said. “I don’t know if the center saw movement and thought he was offsides and so he snapped it”.
Not that it always works out the way you intend.
“It stinks, because when you’re the quarterback and the center snaps it…that happened to us every once in a while”, he said, “whether the guys jumped and got back or the ref didn’t call it, Pounce would snap it and now you’re like, it’s not a free play, and now you’ve got to figure something out”.
While I did not find any entirely parallel examples of plays on which the Steelers never would have run a play at all had a player not jumped offside, it’s easy to find “free play” examples that worked out in their favor. There was this long gain to Antonio Brown back in 2015, for example.
Or how about this very audible and memorable moment from Thursday Night Football against the Tennessee Titans in 2017? You can clearly hear Roethlisberger saying “got ‘em” after the snap, knowing that they would be able to run a play without fear of the consequences because, if something were to go against them, it would be brought back due to the offside penalty.
If it works out, then you decline and take the results of the play as it unfolded. In this instance, it was a 41-yard touchdown to Brown. Not a bad way to start a game. But a really bad way to end a half in a game you expect to be close if you don’t get the call. Which is why sometimes that green light isn’t on, and in Linderbaum’s case, I don’t imagine it was.
