It’s time to talk about the NFL’s dumb fumble touchback rule ... again

The worst rule in the NFL nearly broke the Saints’ road to home field advantage through the playoffs in Week 15. Protecting a 12-9 lead in a rock fight on Monday Night Football, New Orleans wideout Tommylee Lewis took a handoff at the Panthers’ 5-yard line to the right sideline and dove toward the end zone for game-clinching touchdown.

One extra yard with his dive would have given the Saints a first down and enough latitude to kneel their way to a three-point win. Two would have made the score 18-9 with 1:45 to play.

But he didn’t make it. And when he extended the ball toward the pylon, cornerback James Bradberry punched it loose, causing it to go flying out of the end zone and out of bounds.

The unlikely turnover robbed the Saints of their chance to grind out the clock against a divisional foe — and showcased the dumbest statute in the rule book once again. Unlike an offensive fumble out of bounds anywhere else on the field, the ball wasn’t returned to the spot of the foul, where officials would have then assessed a 10-yard holding penalty on receiver Michael Thomas. Instead, possession was ceded to Carolina, who got the ball at its own 20-yard line after the touchback.

It’s a flawed ruling that throws an excessive and unfair punishment at offensive players extending the ball at the goal line. And while it didn’t play a factor in Monday night’s outcome — the Panthers used this extra opportunity to go 19 yards in seven plays with the game on the line (and their nine points came courtesy of a Christian McCaffrey trick play and a pick-two on a Saints two-point conversion, which is a story for another time) — it did last season.

The fumble touchback rule struck, coincidentally enough, exactly one year ago in a game between the Raiders and Cowboys. Quarterback Derek Carr’s Oakland team trailed 20-17 when he scrambled to his right from the Dallas 7, picked up enough yardage to set up a first-and-goal situation with fewer than 40 seconds to play, and extended the ball toward the pylon as he dove for the goal line.

And like Lewis, his decision to score a touchdown — the whole point of the game — was rewarded with a harsh ruling.

The Cowboys took over at their own 20 and kneeled out the clock, officially ending the Raiders’ playoff hopes. Oakland lost its final two games after this to finish 6-10, and Dallas used the momentum of its hard-fought victory to lose to the Seahawks and crush its own postseason hopes the very next week.

That happened in a high(ish) profile Sunday Night Football game, but the NFL didn’t address the fumble touchback last winter at its rules meetings after Carr’s game-changing mistake. Lewis’s fumble makes it two straight years there’s been a crucial fumble touchback in prime time for the league, and the hand wringing that’s followed could be the impetus for a change.

Retired offensive lineman Geoff Schwartz proposed three reasonable fixes to the rule last year after Carr’s turnover.

1. The ball comes back to the original line of scrimmage, but with a loss of down.

If it’s on fourth down, then it’s a turnover at the spot of the original play. A fumble is still not a good play, and therefore there needs to be some punishment for the offense, hence the loss of a down.

This scenario rewards the offense too much. If the defense does force the fumble, they don’t get rewarded for it at all.

2. The offense keeps the ball at the spot of the fumble.

This is how it’s handled in the field. However, the rules around the end zone are different because of the significance of that area on the field.

If you decide this is the best rule, it could backfire on the defense. What if an offensive player fumbles near the goal line, when he’s not reaching out and the ball bounces out of the end zone? I think everyone agrees this should be a touchback. So if this rule were to be enforced, it would have to be specific to a play when a player is reaching for the pylon or goal line.

This would leave too much room for interpretation and lead to disaster.

3. The defense gets the ball at the spot of the fumble.

This is my favorite option. It penalizes the offense, but doesn’t reward the defense as much. Seems to be the simple solution.

Those all seem ... pretty reasonable! There’s no good justification for why a fumble out of bounds in the end zone is treated so differently than a fumble out of bounds anywhere else on the field. And while it’s logical that a fumble should punish the offense that created it, the fumble touchback remains one of the league’s harshest rules; a mistake that allows the rulebook to completely shift the momentum of the game.

We’ve seen it happen in back-to-back years now, both in primetime games, and both, strangely, on December 17th. It’s time for the rules committee to consider what happens one week before Christmas Eve and change the NFL’s dumbest rule.