Oregon’s late-game trickery against Ohio State pushed the NCAA to close the penalty loophole

Dan Lannning seemed to hint that Oregon’s late penalty during the Ohio State game was on purpose.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include new information.

It certainly seemed like the Ducks intentionally had too many men on the field late in Saturday’s win against Ohio State. And with a little smirk, Oregon football coach Dan Lanning all but confirmed what many college football fans suspected.

“We spend an inordinate amount of time on situations,” Lanning said. “There are some situations that don’t show up very often in college football, but this is one that obviously was something that we have worked on. So you can see the result.”

His works came with a smile, though he didn’t explicitly say one way or the other. But let’s back it up.

In one of the biggest college football games of the season, No. 2 Ohio State traveled to No. 3 Oregon, and it didn’t disappoint. The Ducks kicked a field goal with less than two minutes left to take a 32-31 lead, but the Buckeyes had plenty of time to score.

Late in the game with 10 seconds left, Ohio State was at third-and-25 at Oregon’s 43-yard line and eyeing field goal range. After Oregon called a timeout, it sent 12 defenders on the field. Buckeyes quarterback Will Howard thew an incomplete pass, four seconds came off the clock and the Ducks were penalized for an illegal substitution.

Whether or not Lanning and the Ducks took the penalty on purpose is the issue at hand here, because, if done on purpose, Oregon essentially traded the five-yard penalty for taking the four seconds on the clock that Howard took after the snap.

And Lanning seemed to hint that it was:

It’s honestly brilliant if, again, it was done on purpose and is reminiscent of Buddy Ryan’s “Polish Goaline” move.

Now, the NCAA is reportedly looking into this Oregon move because the Ducks ultimately benefitted from the penalty in trading yards for time off the clock.

As Yahoo Sports reported Tuesday:

Steve Shaw, the NCAA secretary rules editor, told Yahoo Sports on Tuesday that the NCAA Football Playing Rules Committee is actively “engaged” in examining the play for possible action. The Big Ten officiating crew handled the play appropriately, Shaw said, but the rules committee is discussing a way to address the play.

In the past, the rules committee has responded to such “fair play” incidents with interpretation bulletins released during a season. The bulletins are often meant to be a directive for officials in games in the future.

NBC Sports screenshot

The idea here, as Yahoo Sports noted, is that the team on the receiving end of a penalty shouldn’t benefit from said penalty, and a mid-season rules directive — like telling officials to add the lost time back to the game clock — would be designed to discourage coaches from further capitalizing on the rules. If the NCAA wants to rewrite the rulebook officially, it’ll have to wait until the off-season.

Who knows what will happen here, if anything? But if Lanning and the Ducks did this purposely, it’s hard to fault them for seeing a loophole in the rules.

And, of course, we know what happened next in the game: With six seconds left on the clock, Howard ran, scrambled and ultimately fell short of making a final game-winning play for the Buckeyes.

UPDATE: The NCAA issued a new in-season directive Wednesday for officials to eliminate potential advantages gained by using this loophole. It’s specifically for the end of halves and the end of games.

The new interpretation is:

After the Two-Minute Timeout in either half, if the defense commits a substitution foul and 12 or more players are on the field and participate in a down, officials will penalize the defense for the foul and at the option of the offended team, reset the game clock back to the time displayed at the snap. The game clock will then restart on the next snap. If the 12th defender was attempting to exit but was still on the field at the snap and had no influence on the play, then the normal substitution penalty would be enforced with no clock adjustment.

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