Late flags seem shady, but in at least one instance referees have no choice

The late flag. While fans are agitated with just about everything NFL officials do these days, it’s that penalty flag coming out seconds late that drives fans the nuttiest. It doesn’t matter if the officials get it right, as they did for a facemask call Monday night against the Denver Broncos. To many fans, a late flag is a display of officiating incompetence, and of course, cheating.

Yet, one foul -- intentional grounding -- mandates a period of time before any flag is thrown. It’s a complicated call with many moving parts that requires coordination between officials even after the play is over.

The complications in making the call rest in the very definition of intentional grounding in Rule 8.2:

It is a foul for intentional grounding if a passer, facing an imminent loss of yardage because of pressure from the defense, throws a forward pass without a realistic chance of completion. A realistic chance of completion is defined as a pass that lands in the direction and the vicinity of an originally eligible receiver.

With almost every foul, one official can make the call himself after viewing the action in front of him. On the flip side, intentional grounding involves actions in three potentially distinct parts of the field: 1) the offensive backfield where the passer is located, 2) the line of scrimmage where the receiver makes himself eligible or ineligible and 3) the defensive backfield in the direction of the pass attempt.

It’s a complicated foul that, due to the different responsibilities of each official, inherently mandates the participation of at least two (and sometimes three) officials: The referee and one of the flank officials on the sideline (usually the line judge or head linesman).

Because of the special nature of the position, the passer (usually the quarterback) receives the attention of the referee for the entirety of the play. The referee doesn’t concern himself with the receivers until after any threat against the passer is eliminated, usually well after a pass is complete or incomplete, or the ball has been handed to the runner.

The referee will know what happens on the passer’s end. He could, at times, consult the umpire on the location of the tackles at the start of the play, which can take some time to sort out. This is important because the restrictions on the passer change if he leaves “the tackle box.” At that point, the pass simply needs to end at or beyond the line of scrimmage to make it a legal forward pass.

At the same time, the flank officials pay no attention to the passer during the play, but they know where the receivers lined up, who’s eligible and who was in the vicinity of the end of the pass.

Even if the ball is thrown very near the passer -- at the feet of a nearby player in the offensive backfield -- the referee may still need to consult with other officials to determine if the receiver was eligible. E.g., the “receiver in the area” could be a tight end wearing No. 80, but that player could have been “covered up” on the line of scrimmage by a receiver (something the referee likely would not know), making him ineligible.

Adding a healthy dose of subjectivity to the rule is item 2, which essentially says that if contact on the passer is what made the ball go where it went, it’s not intentional grounding. That’s up to the referee, as well.

Because no one official has all the information to call this foul, everyone holds their flags until after a conference. If after the conference he’s satisfied that the requirements for intentional grounding were met, the referee (whose responsibility is the passer) will throw his flag. No good referee would ever throw that flag until well after the play is over and all the necessary determinations have been made after talking with other members of the crew.

Truth is, most “late” calls like touchdowns are due to communication that has to occur before a definitive call can be made. In the case of intentional grounding, that happens every single time.