SmashMouth

Dan Hanzus of NFL.com reported in March that the owners had passed the proposal to ban the formation. It seems it now has been officially written into the rule book.

In the NFL, an offense has to have five players on the field who are ineligible to catch a pass. These five players are usually offensive lineman and they usually are stacked in the middle of the field to protect the quarterback.

In the AFC divisional playoff against the Baltimore Ravens, the Patriots ran three-straight plays where they stacked four ineligible receivers in the middle of the field, with a fifth eligible receiver next to them to look like a blocker. They put their fifth ineligible player further along the line of scrimmage to make him look like a receiver.





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WhoDat!656

And they wonder why fans say they cheat!

QBREES9

That was great.

SloMotion

Well, it was against the Ravens, so I'm not going to get too excited about any alleged shenanigans. Is Belichik cheating or is he just some kind of evil genius who thinks outside the box? Or is he just expert at exploiting loopholes? IDK, maybe he should be the next Commissioner, #shrug.

MaggieMayTB

Does it kill the NFL to consider Bill may end up becoming one of the greatest football minds to coach the game?

What kills me is the last line about ref's using hand signals in SB to let Seahawks know Bill was using this formation.

SloMotion

Agree, if it's a legal formation, let the opponent figure it out, no need to get the ref's involved. Roger musta' wanted SEA to repeat, .

QBREES9

I think it does kill them. They love you second, hate you the next.

WhoDat!656

How long do you think it would take the Patriots to complain if a team did something like that to them?

SloMotion

IDK, do the Pats complain about stuff, other than when they get "Roger'ed"? Gotta' think Belichick could come up with something to counter that formation anyway, #shrug.