Mike Pereira Explains College Football Rules Updates to Roughing the Passer

Everybody wants to make sure quarterbacks are protected, and I get that.

Roughing the passer, though, has become one of the most controversial calls in college football, even more so if you extend it to targeting.

For this season in college football, there were a few words added into the rule for roughing the passer. They don’t represent major rule updates, but they’re noteworthy enough and are likely to come up in a few big games throughout the season.

The goal is to protect the player who’s in a passing posture. That means if he’s in the pocket and looking down the field, he’s defenseless. He might be able to feel pressure coming from either side, but he’s essentially a defenseless player. As long as a quarterback is in that passing posture, whether he’s going to throw it or get sacked before he throws it, that’s what they’ll consider a passing posture.

If that quarterback takes off running or is on the run, that’s not a passing posture until the player stops and gets set again to a point where it’s clear he’s a passer. That passing posture will be key for this season.

Something else on player safety that has also been addressed this season is a player who is attempting to secure a loose ball. When the ball is fumbled or there’s a muffed punt, you have players going after it. Those players are now considered defenseless. If a player on your team is in the scrum trying to recover a fumble, players on the other team doing the same cannot be targeted.

What does that mean? Well, if someone is idiotic enough to try to hit that player instead of making an effort to recover the football, that will be a penalty.

It’s a wrinkle to the rule that was likely added because it happened once in a game and there was no way to enforce it. I don’t think this will really come up, but it’s something that was covered.

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