OSAA High School Football Official Training Video - Helping The Runner

well hello everyone and welcome to a special edition of the clips of the week rather than showing a bunch of Clips regarding a variety of plays this video is going to look at one point of emphasis for the 2023 season and that's helping or aiding the runner so we want to take a look at a few Clips to illustrate this point of emphasis the first one that we're going to look at was one that we shared with you back in week one and the helping the runner foul was properly called here by the center judge on this play so you may remember seeing this about a month ago or so well remember our goal is to have one rule one mechanic and one interpretation as districts have changed and teams travel around the state both during the regular season and obviously in the postseason schools are going to work with officials from different associations and our goal here in Oregon is to have again one rule one interpretation and one mechanic so let's take a look at some clips that were turned in by the crews that worked them where we had aiding or helping the runner sometimes called often not so the next couple CPS we're going to look at were turned in by the crew and they had several instances where the team in white the visiting team ran a play where the runner was pushed from behind behind we'll see this here from high above and then we'll also have an end zone View and as we can see from The End Zone view the runner is clearly pushed in the back by a teammate on this play the crew lets it go again we'll see it one more time here from The End Zone view this should have been a foul for aiding or helping the runner and it was not caught so let's take a look at another play from this game similar spot on the field again we'll look at it on high and this time they're pushing the runner all the way through to the end zone now let's stop here and point out a couple of things we have the head linesman killing the play and we also have coaching staff from the home team upset about the lack of call now as a reminder if we have a foul for 8 in the runner this is a live ball foul simply throw your flag and continue to officiate the play in this case the crew killed the play so while they recognize Aden the runner they did not throw a flag and they killed the play and that's not what we want to do in a situation like this also I want to point out that the home team in this game was the visiting team in the first clip that we showed on this and about a month ago so again as we stress one rule one mechanic and one interpretation this is a perfect example of why that's important this is a team that was called for the foul of a or helping the runner in week one and then was a victim of the lack of a call in week four so if we look in the rule book under helping the runner the rule says an offensive player shall not push pull or lift the runner to assist in their forward progress so the first couple Clips are what we're accustomed to seeing at different levels where a teammate pushes directly on the runner to help them move forward and again we simply throw the flag it's a live ball foul it's a 5 yard penalty if it is accepted however let's look at a couple other parts of that rule first let's look at a clip that shows a teammate helping the runner by pulling on them so at the end of this play we're going to see number 11 pull on the Jersey and they pull their teammate one or two yards forward this should have easily been picked up by the line judge and the back judge could have had this as well unfortunately we did not get a flag on this play so we want to remind everyone that it's not just pushing the runner that is helping the runner but you can also pull a teammate and we should have a flag on a play like this and finally a teammate is not allowed to lift a runner and assist in their forward progress so we're going to see a play where this happened and again we did not get a call so we're going to get a long run here after this completed pass and number 74 in white is going to lift and carry his teammate probably about five yards we can look that that one again we have the headlines been coming down the back judge is in excellent position to rule on this but we should have a flag where the helping the runner begins so we wanted to take a quick look at a few different clips as we reviewed this point of emphasis for 2023 again this is not a new rule but a point of emphasis and one final reminder that helping the runner is when an offensive player pushes pulls or lifts the runner to assist in their forward progress so hopefully this will help you in your pregame and as you get ready to officiate your next game best of luck in those games and the rest of your season and we'll see you in another video soon