Here’s What the NFL Rulebook Says About Referees Awarding a Touchdown

Explaining a confusing sequence from the NFC championship game.

NFL referee / Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

In the fourth quarter of the NFC championship game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Commanders, a bizarre scene unfolded that led to plenty of confusion for NFL fans.

The Eagles were lining up to attempt their patented tush push with the ball near the goal line. The Commanders, desperate to stop the unstoppable Jalen Hurts sneak, kept getting flagged for jumping offsides as they tried to time up the snap. It happened often enough that the referees for the game got on the microphone and explained to the Philly crowd that, if Washington committed another offsides penalty, the officials could award a score to the Eagles.

In other words, if the Commanders were trying to stop the Eagles from scoring by continually getting penalized, the refs could just call it how it is and give the Eagles a touchdown.

Confusing, right? Here's what the rulebook says about that concept.

What does award a score mean in the NFL?

According to the official NFL rulebook, under the Touchdowns section, a touchdown can be scored when, "the Referee awards a touchdown to a team that has been denied one by a palpably unfair act."

Additionally, under the Unsportsmanlike Conduct section of the rule book, it is stated that, "The defense shall not commit successive or repeated fouls to prevent a score." If they do, then "the score involved is awarded to the offensive team."

Those are the two circumstances in which referees are permitted to award a score. As far as the Eagles-Commanders game, the latter was the instance the officials were facing—repeated and successive fouls committed by Washington to prevent Philadelphia from scoring.

In regards to the former circumstance, a "palpably unfair act" in the past has been a random person coming onto the field of play to tackle an active runner. Other palpably unfair acts include jumping in front of the goal post to prevent a field goal from going through the uprights, as well as holding a substitution from running onto the field until just before the snap.

A strange sequence of events in a high-profile playoff game, to be sure. But now the world knows the referees are permitted to step in and award points under the right circumstances.

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