How intentional grounding works in college and the NFL

A cheat sheet for remembering what is and isn’t a penalty.

You’ll usually know intentional grounding when you see it. These are the criteria that officials use in the NFL and college football to call it or not.

The intentional grounding rule is pretty much the same in the NCAA and NFL.

The basics: It’s intentional grounding if a QB throws the ball away to avoid a sack or to save time, hasn’t gotten outside the pocket, and doesn’t throw the ball past the line of scrimmage (or the horizontal plane extending out of bounds from it).

The NFL rule has a specific exception for QBs who get hit in the process of throwing what would otherwise be a legal pass. The penalty in the NFL can be either 10 yards or the offense moving back to the spot of the foul, while in college, it’s always the latter.

Both rulebook also have carveouts to allow a QB to spike the ball upon immediately upon receiving the snap. He just can’t drop back and then decide to down it.

Here’s the full intentional grounding rule from the NCAA.

An offensive player can’t throw a forward pass if his entire body is beyond the line of scrimmage. The offense can’t throw two forward passes on any play. The defense can’t throw one, and there can’t be a forward pass after a change of possession on a given play. You already know all of that. Now, relevant excerpts from the rulebook:

A forward pass is illegal if:

-The passer to conserve time throws the ball directly to the ground (1) after the ball has already touched the ground; or (2) not immediately after controlling the ball.

-The passer to conserve time throws the ball forward into an area where there is no eligible Team A receiver.

-The passer to conserve yardage throws the ball forward into an area where there is no eligible Team A receiver.

But there’s an important exception:

It is not a foul if the passer is or has been outside the tackle box and throws the ball so that it crosses or lands beyond the neutral zone or neutral zone extended.

And then there’s an exception to the exception:

This applies only to the player who controls the snap or the resulting backward pass and does not relinquish possession to another player before throwing the forward pass.

That means if a running back is about to get forced out of bounds behind the line of scrimmage and throws it away, it’s grounding. It can also be grounding if the QB gets pressured after giving up the ball on a reverse and getting it back.

If a QB grounds the ball from the end zone, it’s a safety. All other times, the ball goes to the spot of the foul.

So, if all these things are true, a pass can’t be intentional grounding:

• It’s thrown by whoever took the snap (probably the QB)
• The QB has gotten out of the pocket
• The pass has crossed the horizontal plane of the line of scrimmage

But if a QB doesn’t meet all of those criteria and doesn’t throw the ball anywhere near one of his receivers, it’s probably grounding.

Like this:

QB in the pocket? Check. Ball thrown away to preserve yardage? Sure looks like it, unless it was one of the biggest route mixups ever. That’s intentional grounding.

One extra grounding thing: It carries a clock runoff late in a half.

Grounding is always a live-ball foul, and it always stops the clock. But if a team gets a grounding penalty in the last minute of either half, the defense has the option to run 10 seconds off the remaining time. The offense can intentionally ground the ball to end the game if it wants, because while most fouls call for an untimed down if they happen on the last play of a half, ones that include a loss of down don’t. (This rule was famously, wrongly applied at the end of a Central Michigan-Oklahoma State game in 2016.)

The NFL also has a 10-second runoff for grounding calls in the last two minutes of a half.

At both levels, if the offense has timeouts remaining, it can use one to avoid the runoff.