Is it Just Me?

[South Pender]

Or do the rest of you guys see offside by receivers heading towards the line of scrimmage on a lot of plays? For a while, I thought it might just be my aging eyes failing to pick up the snap of the ball, but I've really concentrated on this hard the last few games, and it seems to me that something like a third of plays have the receivers in motion ahead of the LOS before the ball is snapped. Usually, it's not by many yards--maybe 1-3 yards--but it's there--on so many plays. When a receiver is over the LOS by, say 4 or 5 yards, it's often caught, but not always. In today's Eskimo-RR game, there was at least one occasion when the receiver was a good 3-4 yards into the defense, and no call was made. Is there some unspoken (or maybe even spoken) agreement between officials and the teams that some offside by receivers in motion will be tolerated? I'm pretty sure that, if an official were placed right on the LOS to watch for this, he'd see a huge number of plays with the receivers well across the line before the snap.

[sj-roc]

I've noticed a few plays like this in the last couple years, too. Sometime I've wondered if it's just parallax with the camera not being right on the LOS, but there are other times when it's more obvious. Remember earlier this season in Toronto? An Argo receiver was offside but K Williams was the one who got flagged, and it wiped out a Byron Parker int TD return. Cuthbert even called the Argos offside from the live action.

[Sir Purrcival]

No, its just you! Kidding. I call it the Elgaard Effect. It seems like the receivers trying to time it up so they are at the line at the snap are often a bit offside. They never have seemed to call that penalty except on the most blatant occasions.

[TheLionKing]

This has been going on since for years. Would be nice if Tom Higgins clarify the rule on this one. When is offside an offside ?

[agent2]

At full speed they do often look offside but with an HD PVR you can pause-frame advance and although its often very close, its hard to call. I think its because at full speed the eye picks up the ball after its passed through the centre's legs and at that point the receivers are a good step over the LOS.

[Rammer]

At full speed they do often look offside but with an HD PVR you can pause-frame advance and although its often very close, its hard to call. I think its because at full speed the eye picks up the ball after its passed through the centre's legs and at that point the receivers are a good step over the LOS.

I often did that when I first got the HD PVR, glad to know that I am not the only one... Now I look for a receiver to 'appear' to be on the oppositions front line in order to raise my hand for an offside.

[Tighthead]

I have heard that the shotgun snap makes things look worse than they are. With the shotgun, we aren't as aware of when the ball is actually snapped, and judge it to be a bit later than it really is. Makes some sense.

I do think receivers are given some leeway.

[South Pender]

My observations have come by looking at where the receivers are when the line starts to move. I haven't usually followed the snap.

[Big Time]

It's not you - it's the camera angle. The cameras are not always positioned in alignment with the o-line. This can give the appearance of being offside when in fact they aren't. The officials are right there and usually make the right call. There have been a few games where I thought there should have been more calls (Riders game in particular as they looked to be jumping offside on virtually every play). However I'm thinking the camera is more likely to be playing tricks on you than your eyes.

[Lions4ever]

No you're not alone. It's not the camera angle. It's not the speed of HD. They're offside. Try trusting reality for a change.

[sj-roc]

It's not you - it's the camera angle. The cameras are not always positioned in alignment with the o-line. This can give the appearance of being offside when in fact they aren't. The officials are right there and usually make the right call. There have been a few games where I thought there should have been more calls (Riders game in particular as they looked to be jumping offside on virtually every play). However I'm thinking the camera is more likely to be playing tricks on you than your eyes.

That's the parallax I was talking about. But if it truly is a parallax effect, then the apparent offsides should always come on the same side of the O-line, left or right as projected onto the camera field of view.

For example if the offence is driving from left to right on the screen with the main sideline camera positioned ahead (i.e., on the defensive side) of the line of scrimmage, then the intersection of the LOS with the near sideline will be farther to the left on the screen than the corresponding intersection with the far sideline as viewed from such camera. So a receiver on the LOS between the O-line and the far sideline can appear to be offside by the projection of his image onto the screen from that sideline camera, and it would always be that sort of the scenario that leads to the trompe l'oeil. An onside receiver between the O-line and the near sideline would never appear to be offside by such projection, and in fact would even wrongly appear to be onside from that sideline camera up to a certain critical distance beyond the LOS, depending on the camera placement and orientation.

So the question becomes, are these "phantom" offsides always of this type? Mind you, this discussion assumes the field has no crown, which is def NOT the case in Ssk and complicates matters. The hash marks can help resolve matters but for live action the high speed of the game can hamper the conclusion. There's also the matter that the O-line often lines up slightly behind the true LOS as given by the spot of the ball. If you subconsciously take that alignment as the LOS instead of the down marker placement then an onside player can also appear to be offside even in the absence of any parallax.

[Cougar Country]

Mark Cohon was on Team 1040 about a month ago, and he was asked this question... his answer was that for a slotback it won't be called if it's close, by the sounds of it up to half a step or so, as a way for the league to promote offense/entertaining football for the fan's benefit. It sounded like slotbacks get the benefit of the doubt, within reason, that they are trying to time it right, and he didn't think fans wanted to see tons of flags flying over that. To my recollection, I've only seen it called lately when it was more like a full stride offside. He said something about consistency with this type of thing being important. There was also some mention of it being a trick of the eye sometimes.

On a side note, it was overall a really good radio show. It seemed to be part of some kind of mini-series(?) out of Toronto called "Inside the CFL" co-hosted by Mike Hogan and the commish himself. Wally Buono was interviewed, as was Anthony Calvillo, where they got quite in-depth into the upcoming "Engraved..." doc about his life story. Too bad it doesn't seem to be an ongoing thing, and I haven't been able to find any info about it. I did manage to track down a podcast which I just scanned thru, but it seems that it cuts off the last few minutes, where the above-mentioned offside discussion took place... :/

http://www.teamradio.ca/podcast/team_in ... ept19~.mp3

IMO the CFL badly needs more of this kind of thing, on a regular weekly schedule so people can more easily stay in touch with what's going on around the league outside of actual game broadcasts etc...

[South Pender]

Mark Cohon was on Team 1040 about a month ago, and he was asked this question... his answer was that for a slotback it won't be called if it's close, by the sounds of it up to half a step or so, as a way for the league to promote offense/entertaining football for the fan's benefit. It sounded like slotbacks get the benefit of the doubt, within reason, that they are trying to time it right, and he didn't think fans wanted to see tons of flags flying over that. To my recollection, I've only seen it called lately when it was more like a full stride offside. He said something about consistency with this type of thing being important. There was also some mention of it being a trick of the eye sometimes.

That makes a lot of sense. I'm pretty sure that my observations have not been (for the most part) optical illusions. I'd say they're allowing them (and it hasn't seemed to be limited to slotbacks) more than a half-step most of the time. I know that most of you guys won't agree with me on this, but this is another example, in my opinion, of slack standards in the Canadian game compared to that in the NFL. Although the officiating in the NFL is not purrfect (and I'm talking about regular officials here), it is much more consistent and tight. This kind of bending the rules to placate the fans, the use of sideline ad signs, which players are constantly crashing into, the tolerance of one man owning two teams--all these things speak to an enterprise (the CFL) that is pretty desperate, and this drives many football fans away from the CFL and into the NFL fold. This isn't the case for me: I like both, but the bush-league (can't really think of a kinder term) features of the CFL do sometimes bother me.

Let the flames begin....

[DanoT]

Mark Cohon was on Team 1040 about a month ago, and he was asked this question... his answer was that for a slotback it won't be called if it's close, by the sounds of it up to half a step or so, as a way for the league to promote offense/entertaining football for the fan's benefit. It sounded like slotbacks get the benefit of the doubt, within reason, that they are trying to time it right, and he didn't think fans wanted to see tons of flags flying over that. To my recollection, I've only seen it called lately when it was more like a full stride offside. He said something about consistency with this type of thing being important. There was also some mention of it being a trick of the eye sometimes.

That makes a lot of sense. I'm pretty sure that my observations have not been (for the most part) optical illusions. I'd say they're allowing them (and it hasn't seemed to be limited to slotbacks) more than a half-step most of the time. I know that most of you guys won't agree with me on this, but this is another example, in my opinion, of slack standards in the Canadian game compared to that in the NFL. Although the officiating in the NFL is not purrfect (and I'm talking about regular officials here), it is much more consistent and tight. This kind of bending the rules to placate the fans, the use of sideline ad signs, which players are constantly crashing into, the tolerance of one man owning two teams--all these things speak to an enterprise (the CFL) that is pretty desperate, and this drives many football fans away from the CFL and into the NFL fold. This isn't the case for me: I like both, but the bush-league (can't really think of a kinder term) features of the CFL do sometimes bother me.

Let the flames begin....

The quirkiness of the CFL has a certain appeal to some including me.

Didn't the Command Centre review a refs call on a kickoff return or some other play that are not normally booth reviews like TDs, even though no challenge flag was thrown? They sort of over stepped their authority but since they did not overturn a refs decision, no one said anything. Except me and I say "Only in the CFL, and proud of it".

[Lion Guy]

No you're not alone. It's not the camera angle. It's not the speed of HD. They're offside. Try trusting reality for a change.

Spot on. Fantuz when he played in Sask made a living off of being a yard or two ahead of the snap; and the majority of Rider receivers are offside every play