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The NFL referee Jeff Triplette—do not be deceived; there is only one of him—raised eyebrows around the league this week with an officiating oopsie in the Chicago-Detroit game. Midway through the second quarter, rookie Lions running back Dwayne Washington cut through the Bears defense for a 14-yard gain. But moments later, Triplette announced that Lions offensive lineman Graham Glasgow had committed an “illegal hands to the face” penalty. The play was nullified.
Yet a video replay showed that Glasgow should have gotten off scot-free. It was, in fact, Chicago defender Eddie Goldman’s illegal hands that rearranged Glasgow’s meaty countenance, not the other way around. “This is just completely wrong!” sputtered CBS analyst Solomon Wilcots as he saw the footage. ESPN later echoed that sentiment by reporting that Triplette had called the foul on the wrong team.
But slow down there, ESPN. Maybe Triplette knew exactly what he was doing: restoring equitability to this one-sided rule. Why does the guy with the hands always get penalized for “hands to the face”? The guy with the face is equally culpable—he put his face there, after all. Glasgow was practically asking for it. And Jeff Triplette was just restoring the cosmic balance of gridiron justice.
This isn’t the first time that the NFL community has showered scorn on Triplette for his iconoclastic interpretations of the rulebook. Simply type “Jeff Triplette” into Google and you can warm yourself with the hot waves of rage that emanate forth. But among the many huge boners that Triplette has committed over the years, his masterpiece is a little-noticed incident from last season. This multifaceted screwup so delighted me, I was surprised to realize this week that I had never written about it. So gather ’round, friends, for the tale of the invalid invalid invalid invalid fair-catch signal signal.
It was Week 1 of the 2015 season. The St. Louis Rams had fought the reigning NFC champions, the Seattle Seahawks, to a draw at the end of regulation. After St. Louis won the overtime coin toss, Seattle tried an onside kick that was deftly fielded by St. Louis wide receiver Bradley Marquez. Then Triplette stepped in. He called a rare invalid fair-catch signal penalty on Marquez, and he offered Seattle the opportunity to re-kick, nullifying a huge field-position advantage for St. Louis.
On kicking plays, a receiving player can wave his hand above his helmet while the ball is in the air to indicate a “fair catch”—i.e., a catch that the receiver will not try to advance—and thus protect himself from tackles by the opposing team. Like I said, this rule only applies while the ball is still airborne off the kicker’s foot. Triplette explained to a confused St. Louis crowd that because the ball bounced off the ground, the fair-catch signal was bogus. Trouble was, the ball never hit the ground. Seattle’s kicker had launched it cleanly into the air off the tee. Once Triplette realized his error—possibly with illicit help from off the field—he had to invalidate his original call, making it an invalid invalid fair-catch signal.
Triplette’s correction of the ruling restored order, but it also obscured the depths of his screwup. The truth is that Triplette had no business invoking the fair-catch rules on this play. Rule 10, Section 2, Article 2 of the NFL rulebook details the mechanics of a fair-catch signal (i.e., wave your hand from side to side above your helmet) and then describes the invalid fair-catch regulation:
Item 2: Invalid Fair-Catch Signal. If a player raises his hand(s) above his shoulder(s) in any other manner, it is an invalid fair-catch signal. If there is an invalid fair-catch signal, the ball is dead when caught or recovered by any player of the receiving team, but it is not a fair catch. […]
Penalty: For an invalid fair-catch signal: Loss of five yards from the spot of the signal.
Two points of interest here. First, the penalty exists to prevent a scenario where a player does some sort of halfway signal—the old Head & Shoulders dandruff brush—in an attempt to confuse the opposing team. In other words, the rule concerns the “manner” in which you signal a fair catch, and it has nothing to do with whether the ball has hit the ground. If you’re a special teams player and you wave your hand above your head after the ball touches the ground, it’s just a meaningless gesture. In essence, you’re saying hello to the other players, which is a neighborly thing to do. Peculiar, sure, but legal.
Second, note the enforcement prescribed by the rulebook, which is a simple five yards—the kicking team does not get a do-over.
So yes, it’s nice that Triplette withdrew the penalty, but he never had any basis for applying it, and he applied it incorrectly to boot. His entire premise was invalid! Therefore, it was an invalid invalid invalid fair-catch signal.
Congratulations for making it this far, but wait, I have more. This is my favorite part. As Triplette announced the penalty, he acted it out by raising his hand above his shoulder with a little wag, like he was an underpaid Sears-Roebuck photographer trying to get the attention of a fidgeting toddler.
Yet as anyone who took the Block & Tackle referee penalty signal quiz knows, the proper way to indicate an invalid fair-catch signal is to place your hand above your head. That’s right: While Triplette was penalizing Bradley Marquez’s perfectly legitimate act, the referee used a hand signal that was itself invalid! Thus the football world was blessed with the first, and surely the last, invalid invalid invalid invalid fair-catch signal signal in league history.
Calling a penalty on the wrong team is a top-notch boner, don’t get me wrong. But the I.I.I.I.F.C.S.S. was a work of elegant, recursive ineptitude—the Mandelbrot set of bad officiating. Perhaps we will see another virtuosic misapplication of the rules this weekend, from a glasses-wearing Ron Torbert, or from Ed Hochuli, who wears muscles instead of glasses.
As for Triplette, the master himself? I predict his Sunday afternoon will be error-free. He has the week off.
The NFL referee Jeff Triplette—do not be deceived; there is only one of him—raised eyebrows around the league this week with an officiating oopsie in the Chicago-Detroit game. Midway through the second quarter, rookie Lions running back Dwayne Washington cut through the Bears defense for a 14-yard gain. But moments later, Triplette announced that Lions offensive lineman Graham Glasgow had committed an “illegal hands to the face” penalty. The play was nullified.
Yet a video replay showed that Glasgow should have gotten off scot-free. It was, in fact, Chicago defender Eddie Goldman’s illegal hands that rearranged Glasgow’s meaty countenance, not the other way around. “This is just completely wrong!” sputtered CBS analyst Solomon Wilcots as he saw the footage. ESPN later echoed that sentiment by reporting that Triplette had called the foul on the wrong team.
But slow down there, ESPN. Maybe Triplette knew exactly what he was doing: restoring equitability to this one-sided rule. Why does the guy with the hands always get penalized for “hands to the face”? The guy with the face is equally culpable—he put his face there, after all. Glasgow was practically asking for it. And Jeff Triplette was just restoring the cosmic balance of gridiron justice.
This isn’t the first time that the NFL community has showered scorn on Triplette for his iconoclastic interpretations of the rulebook. Simply type “Jeff Triplette” into Google and you can warm yourself with the hot waves of rage that emanate forth. But among the many huge boners that Triplette has committed over the years, his masterpiece is a little-noticed incident from last season. This multifaceted screwup so delighted me, I was surprised to realize this week that I had never written about it. So gather ’round, friends, for the tale of the invalid invalid invalid invalid fair-catch signal signal.
It was Week 1 of the 2015 season. The St. Louis Rams had fought the reigning NFC champions, the Seattle Seahawks, to a draw at the end of regulation. After St. Louis won the overtime coin toss, Seattle tried an onside kick that was deftly fielded by St. Louis wide receiver Bradley Marquez. Then Triplette stepped in. He called a rare invalid fair-catch signal penalty on Marquez, and he offered Seattle the opportunity to re-kick, nullifying a huge field-position advantage for St. Louis.
On kicking plays, a receiving player can wave his hand above his helmet while the ball is in the air to indicate a “fair catch”—i.e., a catch that the receiver will not try to advance—and thus protect himself from tackles by the opposing team. Like I said, this rule only applies while the ball is still airborne off the kicker’s foot. Triplette explained to a confused St. Louis crowd that because the ball bounced off the ground, the fair-catch signal was bogus. Trouble was, the ball never hit the ground. Seattle’s kicker had launched it cleanly into the air off the tee. Once Triplette realized his error—possibly with illicit help from off the field—he had to invalidate his original call, making it an invalid invalid fair-catch signal.
Triplette’s correction of the ruling restored order, but it also obscured the depths of his screwup. The truth is that Triplette had no business invoking the fair-catch rules on this play. Rule 10, Section 2, Article 2 of the NFL rulebook details the mechanics of a fair-catch signal (i.e., wave your hand from side to side above your helmet) and then describes the invalid fair-catch regulation:
Item 2: Invalid Fair-Catch Signal. If a player raises his hand(s) above his shoulder(s) in any other manner, it is an invalid fair-catch signal. If there is an invalid fair-catch signal, the ball is dead when caught or recovered by any player of the receiving team, but it is not a fair catch. […]
Penalty: For an invalid fair-catch signal: Loss of five yards from the spot of the signal.
Two points of interest here. First, the penalty exists to prevent a scenario where a player does some sort of halfway signal—the old Head & Shoulders dandruff brush—in an attempt to confuse the opposing team. In other words, the rule concerns the “manner” in which you signal a fair catch, and it has nothing to do with whether the ball has hit the ground. If you’re a special teams player and you wave your hand above your head after the ball touches the ground, it’s just a meaningless gesture. In essence, you’re saying hello to the other players, which is a neighborly thing to do. Peculiar, sure, but legal.
Second, note the enforcement prescribed by the rulebook, which is a simple five yards—the kicking team does not get a do-over.
So yes, it’s nice that Triplette withdrew the penalty, but he never had any basis for applying it, and he applied it incorrectly to boot. His entire premise was invalid! Therefore, it was an invalid invalid invalid fair-catch signal.
Congratulations for making it this far, but wait, I have more. This is my favorite part. As Triplette announced the penalty, he acted it out by raising his hand above his shoulder with a little wag, like he was an underpaid Sears-Roebuck photographer trying to get the attention of a fidgeting toddler.
Yet as anyone who took the Block & Tackle referee penalty signal quiz knows, the proper way to indicate an invalid fair-catch signal is to place your hand above your head. That’s right: While Triplette was penalizing Bradley Marquez’s perfectly legitimate act, the referee used a hand signal that was itself invalid! Thus the football world was blessed with the first, and surely the last, invalid invalid invalid invalid fair-catch signal signal in league history.
Calling a penalty on the wrong team is a top-notch boner, don’t get me wrong. But the I.I.I.I.F.C.S.S. was a work of elegant, recursive ineptitude—the Mandelbrot set of bad officiating. Perhaps we will see another virtuosic misapplication of the rules this weekend, from a glasses-wearing Ron Torbert, or from Ed Hochuli, who wears muscles instead of glasses.
As for Triplette, the master himself? I predict his Sunday afternoon will be error-free. He has the week off.