TEN@JAX: Lawrence of Absurdia

Jacksonville QB Trevor Lawrence is one shrewd fellow. In less than three NFL seasons he has learned that it’s easy, even preferable, to score points without ever touching the end zone.

In Week 16 of the 2022 season, Lawrence performed a less-than-graceful springboard leap over his line and, despite fumbling the ball while in midair, got credit for a touchdown.

Three weeks later, in the Wild Card round of the postseason, he executed a similar lunge-and-hope maneuver and got knocked to the ground short of the end zone. But because he had briefly nosed the ball into the end zone’s airspace while in flight, he was awarded a critical two-point conversion.

Here, recognizing Tennessee’s Jeffery Simmons (98) has cut off his path to the end zone, Lawrence simply runs wide of it, waves the ball at the pylon, and collects six points despite landing well out of bounds. No matter. The break-the-plane rule creates an extra-wide scoring area for crafty pylon divers, a loophole that ball carriers such as Lawrence exploit on a regular basis.

And he wasn’t finished yet. Hocus Bogus Rating: 5

TEN@JAX: Lawrence of Absurdia, pt. 2

Trevor Lawrence’s first pylon reach against the Titans (above) occurred in the third period. One quarter later was back with an even more implausible stretch that, somehow, someway, was ruled a touchdown even though his right foot clipped the sideline as he extended the ball toward the end zone’s airspace.

That’s two no-touch touchdowns in one half. A good deal for Lawrence, a bad pattern for anyone who cares about the optics of the game. Rating: 5

DAL@CAR: Unfancy footwork

The feet of Carolina tight end Tommy Tremble never make contact with the end zone, due to the solid hit he absorbed from Dallas safety Juanyeh Thomas (30),. But because Tremble was judged to have slipped the ball through a sliver of the end zone’s airspace, his action was deemed worthy of six points. 

If you like scoring plays that avoid any actual, physical contact with the designated scoring area, well, by all means, enjoy. Rating: 4.5

PIT@CLE: Grinder

As shown through the lens of this pretty cool magnifying tool employed by CBS, it appears Cleveland running back Jerome Ford did in fact briefly break the plane during this first-quarter end-zone push against Pittsburgh.

But did he make actual, physical contact with the end zone? Nothing we see shows that he did. That, to us, is a core criterion for awarding six points, so we would rule this a Nix Six. Rating: 3.5

College: A real reach

We don’t attempt to track airspace touchdowns in college football due to the sheer number of games, but sometimes a highlight makes us wince so acutely (see the last entry in our Week 3 recap) that we feel duty-bound to share it with readers.

Michigan’s Semaj Morgan is falling out of bounds short of the goal line, but because he was ruled to have waved the ball over the outer edge of the pylon, which is fully positioned out of bounds, he is presented with six points. Would a professor of logic agree with this call? We have our doubts. Rating: 4.5