The Ravens had a rotten offensive day on Sunday, largely because the team is a mess without Lamar Jackson — but one play caught everyone’s attention. In the first quarter we saw a 29-yard pass to tight end Josh Cuevas, who was lined up in the left guard spot, more or less tearing apart everything we know about offensive football.
The anecdotal response to this play is fairly universal: How is this legal? It just feels wrong to see a player move out of the left guard spot, catch a pass, and take it for a huge gain. However, this is legal in the rules — it just skirts around two elements of the rulebook to allow it to happen.
Firstly there’s “Position of Players at the Snap,” which states:
“Eligible receivers must be on both ends of the line, and all of the players on the line between them must be ineligible receivers.”
The Ravens still had receivers split wide as eligible, satisfying the first element of the rule — and on this play Cuevas was off the line of scrimmage, meaning that everyone between the two players on the line was ineligible. Furthermore, Cuevas’ position ensured he would not be an ineligible receiver as defined by the rules, because:
“Players who are not on either end of their line or at least one yard behind it when the ball is snapped”
Again, Cuevas was off the line — making him a legal, eligible receiver.
In terms of whether or not this will catch on, probably not. It was a really cute football play, but Baltimore OC Declan Doyle probably only gets one or two shots at this a season. Putting a tight end in the spot of a left guard off the line of scrimmage is just asking for a pass-rushing DT to absolutely blow up the tight end as a blocker, with the play relying entirely on the trickery of the defense not knowing who was eligible at the snap.
Moreover, teams will study this film and have their defense pay closer attention to both the positioning of players along the offensive line — as well as which players report as receivers pre-snap. Believe it or not, this play has been run before in the NFL. It’s not as if Declan Doyle invented the play, it’s just not used because, again, it turns out having five specialized blocking linemen in the NFL is kind of important, unless you want your quarterback flattened into a pancake.
Still fun to look at and realize how many elements of the NFL rulebook can still be bent.
