Many who watched the NFC Championship Game between the Washington Commanders and Philadelphia Eagles learned an NFL rule so obscure it’s never been called before. A “palpably unfair act,” conduct so egregious that it could result in automatic points for the opposition. In this case, a touchdown without a touchdown. It stemmed from the Commanders’ repeated attempts of jumping offsides to stop the Eagles’ unstoppable Tush Push. While most had no idea of the rule, Bill Belichick did. And he learned it from the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Discussing last Sunday’s quirky moment, Belichick shared the story of how he learned it was in the rulebook many years ago.
“I learned that from a trick that your Steelers used to pull,” Belichick told Inside the NFL. “Back when those PATs were on the 2-yard-line. Score tied, end of the game, PAT to win. And the corner would jump offside and go block it. Be offsides by two yards. And now it’s kinda in the head of the kicking team of ‘What’s going to happen here?’ And then they’d do it again and again. They’d try to beat the count, sorta like this, until it was kicked or they blocked it and they weren’t offsides.
“And there was a judgment by the referee, if you do this again, we’re just going to make the extra point good. Because they’re kicking from the one-inch line.
As always, let’s go check the tape. A situation similar to how Belichick described it occurred in a 2018 Steelers loss to the Los Angeles Chargers. With the game tied at 30 and lining up for the game-winning field goal, K Michael Badgley got three tries to send his team home winners. All three times, the Steelers were offsides. The first was flat-out missed, the second blocked by CB Artie Burns, and the third missed by Burns despite an early jump that sent him past the kicker.
The first flag clearly wasn’t an intentional offsides. The next two seemed more of the “nothing to lose” variety, though Burns wasn’t known for his sound football decisions.
Unfortunately, combing through game play logs and other data, that’s the best example I could find. Perhaps others are out there but more detail from Belichick would’ve been helpful. Nothing that seemed to come on game-winning extra points. Since 1999, the Steelers have lost just two games by one point. A 1998 25-24 defeat against the Cincinnati Bengals and a 16-15 loss to the Cleveland Browns the following season. Neither came on game-ending extra points. The Browns kicked a game-winning field goal in the waning seconds but footage of the game shows there was no offsides.
Still, Belichick was adamant the Steelers were known for the tactic.
“I don’t want to name names but the Steelers did it,” he said.
More memorably, there was discussion over the refs calling an unfair act on Mike Tomlin’s sideline gaffe against Baltimore Ravens KR Jacoby Jones in 2013. Ultimately, no flag was thrown though Tomlin was fined $100,000 for his actions.
The only examples of this call being made have occurred at the college level. None more famous than the 1954 Cotton Bowl when Alabama’s Tommy Lewis came off the bench to tackle Rice’s Dick Maegle on what was a sure touchdown. Though Maegle was taken down, the refs ruled an automatic touchdown.
Sunday’s Commanders game reminded there’s still NFL events that haven’t occurred. A palpably unfair act. A one-point safety (again, look to the college game for examples). And that goal-line moment was a reminder if you want to leap over the goal line, get Troy Polamalu to do it.
