DEN@NYG: The season’s first pylon poke

The Mystery Touchdown season gets off to a fast start with Denver TE Albert Okwuegbunam plowing into a pylon and getting handed six points for his trouble.

Pylons, as we point out repeatedly on this site, are located in out-of-bounds territory (i.e., “outside the field of play,” as explained in the rulebook) yet are considered part of the end zone (also explained in the rulebook).

We don’t think you can have it both ways. If it’s “outside the field of play,” a pylon in our view is out of bounds, meaning that bonking one with the ball as Okwuegbunam does here is not touchdown-worthy. But because we have seen it ruled as one for so many years, we assume it actually is worthy of being a touchdown. We think not. Hocus Bogus rating: 4

MIA@NE: First career airspace TD

Miami rookie Jaylen Waddle collects his first professional touchdown by never touching the end zone. Congrats! He skims over the left pylon and makes first contact beyond the goal line by landing out of bounds on his right forearm.

Outcomes such as this are repeatedly ruled touchdowns, and we repeatedly wonder how such strange logic got embedded in the game. Rating: 4

DAL@TB: Another pylon poke

A cool play ends with a quizzical result. Quizzical to us, at least.

Dallas WR CeeDee Lamb fakes out his defender, Buccaneers’ CB Sean Murphy-Bunting (23), catches a pass and races toward the corner of the end zone. Safety Antoine Winfield Jr. rides to the rescue and shoves Lamb out of bounds before he can contact the end zone. Pretty decent defensive recovery.

Yet Lamb is awarded a touchdown, we suspect because officials believe Lamb either transported the ball above the pylon (which is positioned out of bounds; see the accompanying images) or broke the Great Invisible Plane. We think both concepts are in need of review, and we question whether Lamb actually accomplished either task. Either way, to us this is not a touchdown. Rating: 4

SF@DET: A matter of sequence

Here is one of our apologetic callouts. At first glance, even to us this looks like a legit touchdown, and by the existing break-the-plane rule, it qualifies,

Yet our proposed rule stipulates that to earn a touchdown, a ball carrier’s first point of down contact must occur on the goal line/in the end zone. Here the left knee of San Francisco RB JaMycal Hasty hits the ground before his left arm (and ball) lands on the goal line. Thus we say no touchdown.

Yet using the break-the-plane rule, officials apparently decided Hasty’s arm had intersected the goal line’s airspace early enough that they declared it to be a touchdown. This particular call is suspect to us, and we regard the overall rule to be a confounding mess that we hope to see changed someday. Rating: 2