It seems that everyone is making a huge deal out of Ty Montgomery’s biggest play this week. On Sunday against the Detroit Lions, Montgomery adroitly exploited one of the NFL’s stranger loopholes on a kickoff, stepping out of bounds and then touching the football. In doing so, the ball is ruled to be out of bounds, and on a kickoff this comes with a penalty that gives the receiving team the ball at their own 40-yard line.
Here’s a look at the play, on which you can clearly see Montgomery make an effort to get his feet out of bounds prior to falling on the football:
Now, before we go praising Montgomery’s Stanford education and personal knowledge of the NFL rulebook (which very well may be valid), we need to identify a few things.