College footballs disconcerting signals: Anatomy and explanation of a complicated rule -

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An offensive lineman jumps before the play. A flag is thrown. The defense celebrates and points. The officials talk briefly, then the referee turns to the crowd and the confusion begins.

“Delay of game … defense,” the referee says, pointing in the opposite direction of what practically everyone in the stadium expected. Then he might further confuse, and amuse, by adding two words rarely heard in football until recently: “Disconcerting signals.”

And yes, those words are being said more frequently. The penalty was called three times in Saturday’s LSU–Missouri game. Boston College was called for it twice in its near-upset of Florida State. Georgia was penalized for it in its win over Kentucky, the second time in three weeks for Kirby Smart’s defense.

Asked to explain it, Smart demurred.

“It’s complicated,” he said. “It’s real complicated. It may be above some of y’all’s football IQ. No offense.”

None taken. But hey, let’s try to explain what’s going on here.

The defense is not allowed to do anything that would simulate the snap. The defensive players can’t yell “hut” or “hike,” and they can’t clap since more offenses are using that for teammates to hear above crowd noise.

“Everybody tries to get an advantage,” NCAA coordinator of officials Steve Shaw said. “But it’s an unfair advantage if the defense tries to do something that’s mirroring the offensive cadence or moving in a way that simulates action at the snap. And many times that’s designed to cause the offense to false start. That’s what we’re really being focused on.”

That’s been the focus for a few years. Two years ago in the national championship game, Alabama linebacker Henry To’o To’o was flagged for clapping multiple times as Georgia was about to snap the ball. A 5-yard penalty was called, and referee Duane Heydt made it clear: “Disconcerting signals, clapping.”

Considering the audience, that might have been the first time many fans remember hearing the call, but it was far from the first time it had been called. Earlier that season, Shaw highlighted the penalty during a video rules review after it was called against a Nebraska middle linebacker for clapping, causing the left guard to false start.

In Saturday’s LSU-Missouri game, all three of the disconcerting signals calls were for clapping. Twice it was against a defensive back (one on each team) who clapped when he was about 8 yards off the line of scrimmage. The other time, Missouri’s middle linebacker, in goal-line defense, had his head turned to a teammate, leading ESPN analyst Robert Griffin III to wonder whether it was a more innocent clap. But officials are supposed to call it even if it seems unintentional, ignorance of the law not being a defense.

“All we’re trying to do is take an unfair advantage that someone is trying to gain, take it out of the game,” Shaw said.

Clapping is an easy way to call it, but it’s not the only way to simulate a snap. For example, Georgia’s delay of game penalties this year:

• In the Kentucky game, Georgia inside linebacker Xavian Sorey Jr. was standing over two defensive linemen, and when he shouted, the two linemen shifted to their right while Sorey jumped to his left. Officials huddled for a moment and called the penalty on Georgia, with SEC Network analyst Greg McElroy calling it the right call. During the replay, he pinned it on Sorey and the defensive linemen for trying to get Kentucky to jump.

“That was something Kentucky had talked about, said they were going to address it with the officials,” McElroy said. “That time they got the call.”

• Two weeks earlier, against UAB, Georgia inside linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson shouted something, and Georgia’s three down-linemen shifted to the left. A moment later, UAB’s left guard and left tackle jumped. But the flag went against Georgia, with Smart protesting and peppering the officials about it during the next timeout.

Smart, speaking this week, acknowledged the officials “probably got it right” both times.

“But there’s been ones that we got right, too, and they weren’t called,” Smart said.

Smart, for instance, said Auburn’s defense clapped “five or six times” against Georgia’s offense two weeks ago, but it was never called.

Shifting by the defensive line is not illegal. Georgia does it often, mainly to mess with the offensive blocking assignments, and it tries to time it to right before the offense is about to snap the ball. The issue is when a defense shifts and also makes a movement that, in Shaw’s words, “simulates action at the snap.”

An example Shaw offered: The nose guard would shift from being over the center to over the guard, but in the process would pump his arm hard or do something that looks like the beginning of a play.

“It’s a matter of doing it the way you’re supposed to do it, and that’s what our kids are coached to do, to do it the way you’re supposed to do it. But sometimes the kids overdo it, and that draws a penalty,” Smart said. “So it’s one of the hardest things to officiate in all of sports, is that, and that’s sometimes very subjective. So it’s complicated.”

Subjective and complicated, and perhaps it depends on who’s doing the officiating. Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz had this short response when asked about all the calls in his team’s game against LSU.

“I don’t know. That’s a crew that calls that a lot,” Drinkwitz said.

Shaw said his read is as officials are getting better at it, the more a point of emphasis it has been.

“If you go back three years, you probably rarely saw a foul for disconcerting signals, delay of game on the defense,” Shaw said. “But now you see it a lot more because our officials are so dialed in and trying to pick that up when that happens. It’s a hard call. I wish it was easy. It’s hard. We’ve got a lot better with the claps. But I can’t tell you we don’t miss one every now and then — they’re so hard.”

This isn’t just about one side of the ball: The quarterback is not allowed to use a head-bob to overly simulate the snap, but the head-bob is more pronounced when the QB is under center and thus is less usable now anyway with teams using more shotgun.

Now, with defenses trying to get their own advantage, the focus has turned in their direction.

“It’s a huge cat-and-mouse game,” Shaw said. “Where we try to come in is if there’s action to create the opponent to foul. Then that’s what we want to get.”

(Photo: David Buono / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

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