Something that’s probably happened before but I’ve never noticed: an offense sending a man in motion before an obvious kneel down in the closing seconds of a half. That’s what Kirk Cousins’ Washington offense did at the Chiefs on Monday Night Football, and I’m enormously confused but kind of curious about why this happened:
Why did Kirk Cousins send a teammate in motion on a kneel down?
Probably because it solved in illegal formation.
And so the half ended. Washington led at the break, 10-7.
The motioning man here is tight end Jeremy Sprinkle, whom Cousin directs to shift from the right side of the Washington line to the left. Does Cousins just think Sprinkle is in bad shape and needs some exercise? Is he somehow worried about getting sacked on a kneel? I’m not sure. The Sprinkle motion did balance out the line, because there had been two tight ends on the right side and none on the left. Symmetry’s nice.
It appears, after some thought, that this fixed an illegal formation.
This was the alignment right beforehand:
The NFL rulebook says you’ve got to have eligible receivers on both ends of the line. Washington’s left tackle is decidedly not an eligible receiver, because of how the NFL classifies linemen. (It’s really mean, but it’s the rules.) So putting Sprinkle on the other side of the formation got Washington out of trouble. College football has no such rule, and I’ll confess to my mind being blown that this is a policy in the NFL.
Good thinking, Kirk!
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