Bills Tight End Reveals Story Behind 15-Yard Snowball Penalty Threat

The Bills’ current five-game winning streak got a bit of a boost from Mother Nature during their 32-29 win at home over the Dolphins in Week 15, as the team and the home fans were energized by a downpour of snow. The flurry got the crowd into such a fervor as to draw the ire of the officials, who made an announcement during the game that Buffalo would be assessed a 15-yard penalty if fans hit anybody on the field with a thrown snow ball.

The crowd eventually settled down. But, as it turns out, the fans could have created quite an interesting scenario if they called the officials’ bluff.

That’s because, as Bills tight end Dawson Knox recalled this week, there wasn’t actually anything the officials could do to penalize a team for fans’ behavior, making the public address announcement an empty threat.

“Apparently, they told coach McDermott or someone, ‘Hey we can’t actually enforce that, we just have to say that for them to stop,’” Knox said on the podcast Green Light with Chris Long. “It was a just say it, to get them to calm down.”

The actual rule book does not cover penalties issued for instances in which fans are throwing things like snowballs onto the field, according to Jay Skurski of The Buffalo News, unless those actions directly impact an in-progress play. So there could have been a penalty if a snow ball, say, caused a player to fumble or fall mid-play.

But for the most part, the referees’ threat amounted to a parent threatening an unruly child to turn the car around on the way to a family vacation.