Well, Hokies, we meet again on the heels of a Tech victory - excellent! This one happens to also be a contest where the ACC zebras… did not particularly impress - less excellent.
Now that everyone’s good and primed to really disagree with me, what better topic for today than everyone’s favorite, holding? We’re going to split this into a two-parter, for both the sake of the reader and editor (Chris, I’m sorry and/or you’re welcome for what’s to come).
Part 1 will include some general refreshers, perimeter blocking, and a quirk I’ve picked up on how the ACC handles pass-rushing. In Part 2, we’ll dive deep into when we’ll pass on holding flags by philosophy even when they’re present by rule.
Everybody excited? No, just me? Fair enough.
Holding Rule and Philosophy Refresher
In one of my earliest articles, I dove into the nuts and bolts of how we call holding. That included the rules involved, mechanics, and general philosophies. I’d recommend reading through that one if you’re new to this series, as now we’re going to really get into some gray areas of holding in college football. There will be very few “yep, that’s a hold” plays covered here, and even fewer, “nope, clearly no hold.”
Now, a quick refresher on the rules and philosophies of holding (again, see my earlier piece for the full explanations). First the rule, 9-3-3:
a) Use of Hands. A teammate of a ball carrier or a passer legally may block with their shoulders, their hands, the outer surface of their arms or any other part of their body under the following provisions.
- The hand(s) shall be:
(a) In advance of the elbow.
(b) Inside the frame of the opponent’s body (Exception: When the opponent turns their back to the blocker).
(c) At or below the shoulder(s) of the blocker and the opponent
(Exception: When the opponent squats, ducks or submarines).
b) Holding. The hand(s) and arm(s) shall not be used to grasp, pull, hook, clamp or encircle in any way that illegally impedes or illegally obstructs an opponent.
That’s a lot of words to say, “don’t grab and restrict a defender with your hands or arms,” but we do see some relevant and helpful exceptions in there.
By philosophy, we need to be able to put any restriction into one of several buckets or categories. These include “grab and restrict,” “hook and restrict,” “takedown/reverse takedown,” and “pull and shoot.”
It is also commonly accepted philosophy that the restriction in question must occur at the point of attack, have a material effect on the play conferring a substantial advantage to the blocker’s team, and the restricted player must be illegally impeded from generally going where he wants to go.
In broad strokes, the closer you are to the ball, the smaller the restriction necessary to draw a flag, and not every restriction will be judged to have a material impact on the play, regardless of the severity of that restriction.
Alright, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to some video. I’ve done my best to highlight the blocks in question in each of these, typically by highlighting the defender to be blocked.
Can You Trust Your Lying Eyes?
One general point I want to make (and I’ve made it before specifically for things like spotting the ball) is that we as fans will always be at the mercy of the TV camera or the vantage point of our seat in the stadium.
There’s a reason there isn’t an Assistant Line Judge sitting in Section 134 of Lane Stadium, after all.
No play I’ve seen this season better demonstrates that idea than one from Tech’s game against Wake Forest. Keep an eye on Hokie LB Jaden Keller (#24):
Well, let’s watch that again, this time with an end zone shot tacked on, which would give us a view more similar to that of U, who along with C and H would be most likely to catch this action.
If you watch Keller’s feet, he really does just sort of slide right past the runner, with the OL gently escorting him past. The contact might be ruled from the back, but it’s at least mostly from the side and pretty light regardless. The primary factor taking Keller past the ball carrier is his own momentum and poor footing.
So that’s just a bit of context I want us to keep in the back of our minds, both for this piece and more generally. It is super easy to get fooled by a poor camera angle into thinking we see a clear foul that isn’t actually there.
That’s one of the main reasons we as officials work in crews. We rely upon our crewmates to be in position so that we collectively have a full view of the action. Had one of these officials thrown a flag for a hold or block in the back, I’d expect U or maybe C to come in and get that waived off.
In the Trenches
Whenever someone says, “they could call holding on every play,” that person is almost always talking about action on the interior of the line of scrimmage. And that person would have a point, because it certainly gets messy.
I’ve worked a few games at U, and can confidently say that it’s an absolute jungle in there. There are grabs, pushes, and heaven-knows-what-at-the-bottom-of-a-pile to deal with on the inside virtually every play. The key is to determine which of these allow a player to gain an unfair advantage (or constitute a safety foul), and which are just part of the inherent sloppiness of life in the trenches.
1. The DE twists inside into the waiting arms of Kyle Altuner (#62), and Tech’s center definitely gives him a bit of a yank as the end attempts to disengage to track Drones. That action, however, is a solid six yards away from the ball, and Drones passes (poorly) long before any defender is in position to tackle him. Easy decision to pass on a holding flag here.
2. Altuner again is the focus. At the snap, the DT attempts to stay low to maintain leverage, but fails to drive his feet to keep them under his torso, and drops to a knee. As he struggles to get back up, Altuner stays with his block and attempts to drive him downfield to open the hole for Terion Stewart (#8).
While Altuner does end up with his left arm awkwardly around the DT’s neck/chest, it’s quite clear that said left arm is not primarily what’s led to the RB’s running lane. This is closer to a submarine than any sort of grab- or hook-and-restrict.
3. I picked this one because it’s a decent reminder of how tricky the camera angle can make things for us fans. Gilliam looks like he might get his pads momentarily turned a couple steps after the snap, and ends up with the guard’s arm across his chest by the time the ball gets to the perimeter, but the end zone view indicates that there was minimal - if any - impact on Gilliam’s ability to work his way outside.
Yet again, the primary impediment to the defender’s progress is the traffic in front of him, not an OL’s hands or arms.
4. Regardless of camera angle, I’m pretty comfortable saying Ben Bell got tackled here.
I run into this situation during just about every single game I work, and the answer I give to every exasperated coach screaming for a holding flag is that it was on the opposite side of the line from the ball, and it had got no material impact on the play. The bubble that forms on the right side is almost certainly going to shield Bell from making a play as the RB bounces outside.
I said at the top of this that we’d be firmly in the gray area when it comes to holding for this piece, and this play is a great example. Because even though it’s on the opposite side of the line, the restriction is so egregious, that there’s certainly an argument to be made that the flag should fly regardless. All we can hope for in that case is consistency from the crew (and ideally the conference).
5. I promise I don’t actually have anything personally against Kyle Altuner, but here we go once again. Wake’s DT gets stood up, Altuner has his hands outside the frame of the shoulderpads, and Tech’s center turns his opponent into the turf, with no small amount of help from his LG who has tripped and essentially table-tops the DT.
The good news for Altuner is that this is just a car wreck in the middle. It’s pretty darn difficult to toss a flag into a mass of humanity and say that hold impacted the play. Yes, at first glance, it looks like a takedown that could be called regardless (not to mention the potential chop block if Layth Ghannam had gone low on purpose).
But no matter what Altuner does or does not do with his hands, that DT is not making the play on the outside. There’s just too much traffic. No foul.
6. Even though it certainly looks like Rimac has his opponent locked up with his right arm, U in this case judges the restriction to be inconsequential to the outcome of the play; the DT wanted to go inside, and only turned back outside after the runner was already through the hole.
The final category of OL shenanigans that we’ll almost universally let slide is double-teams. Good rule of thumb: any time a defender is doubleteamed, the only way he’s drawing a flag for holding is if he can cleanly split that double-team, and is pretty much dragged to the ground by one of the blockers.
If an offense is willing to commit an extra blocker to a single defender, they’ve surrendered a numerical advantage to the defense which would require a massive restriction to overcome with a flag.
Again, by philosophy, we will not judge a blocker to have gained an unfair advantage over a doubleteamed defender without a really big restriction to justify the flag.
Restrictions on the Perimeter
While selecting plays for this piece, I noticed quite a few suspect blocks on perimeter runs. The one I detailed above I think was a good example of how things go when there’s a good deal of traffic heading outside, but how are holds assessed in a one-on-one matchup on the edge? For this series of plays, I’ve highlighted the offensive player involved, as I think it’s important to see how these blockers set up to most accurately judge whether a holding flag is justified or not.
While Canion is certainly in danger of being outflanked and having to resort to a more drastic grab to prevent Crim from making the tackle, he does well to keep his feet moving to reposition himself, and drive Crim upfield.
Next, TE Benji Gosnell (#82) is driven off-balance as the corner aggressively attacks his outside shoulder.
While Gosnell appears to hook and turn the defender, I’d say it’s a reasonable judgement by the short wing to determine that it was the corner’s own momentum which took himself out of the play, rather than a restriction from Gosnell.
In the wide view, you can even see the short wing’s focus shift from the block to the runner as Hawkins scoots past. He saw that block the whole way, and that was well-covered by H to keep his attention where it needed to be rather than ball-watching or following the receiver too far inside.
The final play is easily the most questionable of the sequence; the only thing that gives me pause is that we only have the single view from the sideline (the downfield camera instead chose to focus on a close-up of the Wake QB’s crotch, as he was holding a presumably injured hand after this play. Thanks, CW. Excellent work.).
The LT releases and moves to attack Bell (#33) in space, which is certainly going to be a tricky proposition for the big man. As Bell closes, the tackle grabs his left hand/arm and drags him down, knocking Bell off balance.
It’s a big enough restriction that it’s likely H could/should have caught it here, but it’s not nearly as easy a call as it appears from the broadcast view, especially with the restricted arm being on the far side of the defender’s body from the official. This is definitely one where I’d want C or even U to shift their focus over to assist, as they’re mostly covering linemen in empty space at the moment, while S must keep an eye on the WR/DB matchup downfield.
The ACC’s Pass-Rush Exception
I noticed in the course of grabbing clips from the NCState, Wake, and GT games that a pretty consistent trend emerged: there were quite a few substantial/obvious restrictions on pass rushers either right off the snap, or several yards from the ball, that just straight-up were not being called by officials.
I’ve termed the phenomenon the “ACC pass rush holding exception.” Here are some examples:
Next is that there’s a decided lack of clips from the Virginia Tech OL. This may (reasonably) cause Hokie fans to feel slighted; clearly this is evidence that the Tech OL gets called for holding while the opposition keeps getting away with it! To be perfectly blunt, a holding flag requires a restriction to have taken place, and Hokie pass-blockers have simply not restricted many opponents in any meaningful way, legal or otherwise.
I do have a couple of specific observations, though.
First, unless the defender is dragged to the ground, ACC officials appear to be extremely hesitant to flag any restriction off the snap. Similarly, whenever the restriction occurs well away from the QB, the flag stays in the pocket, especially if the QB either throws or tucks the ball away to scramble quickly enough that the defender was unlikely to have made it home in time.
Shoot, even in that last clip, where Benji Gosnell executes a feet-to-back takedown which would get Coach Robie himself excited, R and/or C apparently judged the pass to be imminent and away from the action (so the defender wasn’t even in the path of the ball to bat it down), and therefore passed on an absolute in-the-open, even-grandma-can-see-it-from-the-cheap-seats train wreck of a hold by the Tech TE.
On the whole, I think I’m actually alright with it. I’m sure Ben Bell and J.C. Price would disagree, and I myself have flagged virtually identical action at the high school level numerous times this season alone. But so long as the ACC is consistent, and ACC coaches and players are clear on what is and is not a foul, I say play on.
I’ve been part of numerous games where it seemed like flags were flying constantly. No matter how justified each one was, it does really muck up the game, and it’s an unpleasant experience for everyone. If the ACC has decided to err on the side of smoother games and a more “let ‘em play” attitude, then again, so long as they maintain that judgement consistently (which I think they have so far), I don’t have a problem with it.
My point is that we as fans should be emotionally prepared to see pass rushers get held at the line without a flag. We may or may not agree with it, but it looks like that’s a conscious decision from the conference. And of course now that I’ve written that, we’ll see an exceptionally ticky-tack holding flag on one of our tackles right out the gate next weekend. It’s coming like a freight train, just like the dueling ESPN-graphic-jinx field goal misses from the end of the Cal game.
Of course, it’s entirely possible that I’m completely wrong here, and I’ve just highlighted a half-dozen or so instances where officials were dinged in their game evaluations. Who knows?
That’ll do it for today. Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll cover some controversial non-calls and take a look at some flagged holds as well.