If you’re wondering why more teams didn’t do what the Steelers did on the final play of Monday night’s 33-30 loss to the Chargers—jumping offsides three times in a row hoping the ref would miss one or they could perfectly guess a snap and maybe block the kick.
Well it’s because you can’t.
Yeah, I didn’t know either but thanks to the Steelers hijinks at the end of regulation, we now have been made privy to an obscure NFL rule.
The rule, according to a pair of former heads of NFL officiating—Dean Blandino and Mike Pereira—says that officials can call a penalty for “continually fouling” to stop a team from scoring and, as a result, award them the score.
As Pereira pointed out, it’s got to be “intentional” in order for a zebra to award a team a score, and that comes after a warning from officials. Blandino said he would have considered it after the second or third offsides, which absolutely would have blown up social media and created debate for days.
Source: USA Today