americancontrol t1_iy297ut wrote on November 28, 2022 at 4:43 AM

Its an illegal play, otherwise this likely would be employed in short yardage situations to catapult players over the line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helping_the_runner

". . .but the runner shall not grasp a teammate and no other player of his team shall grasp, push, lift or charge into him to assist in gaining forward progress."

GoForPapaPalpy t1_iy29wyq wrote on November 28, 2022 at 4:50 AM

I mean that’s done all the time though. You have big push piles to help advance runners forward. Most notably on QB sneaks, but also on any play where the small forward progress matters

americancontrol t1_iy2dkv6 wrote on November 28, 2022 at 5:27 AM

Looks like the pushing clause was removed in 2013 (from the NFL at least), good catch.

https://www.footballzebras.com/2019/11/when-is-it-a-foul-for-pulling-a-ball-carrier-forward/

dimonium_anonimo t1_iy2aa0w wrote on November 28, 2022 at 4:53 AM

Holding is done on every play too, and that's against the rules. It's all about not getting caught. Plus, most of the push piles happen at the line of scrimmage whereas the runner starts behind. The offense is trying to push the defense back, not the runner forward... Mostly. If they waited to start pushing until the rubber was in front, the play would be over. So I think they can get away with a little bit of pulling the runner along with them. What I do know for sure is that vaulting off your teammates (and I think the word is such that being thrown by your teammate also counts) is very illegal, and very hard to hide.

Diagonalizer t1_iy2antx wrote on November 28, 2022 at 4:57 AM

You see one offensive player push a teammate forward all the time. It happens just about every time that a play is called dead due to forward progress and also on pretty much every QB sneak.