National Coordinator of Officials explains why Penn State fake kneel should have been ruled dead

The outcome of the game was already well in hand, but the touchdown that Penn State scored with just more than two minutes to go against Northwestern in a win on Saturday apparently should not have counted. All because of a fake knee from backup quarterback Beau Pribula.

National coordinator of officials Steve Shaw explained the missed call during a rules breakdown posted by the SEC Officiating account on X. Basically, the play where Pribula deked the defense by appearing to take a knee should’ve been blown dead as he did so.

“The quarterback is back in shotgun formation. He’s going to take the snap. He fakes forward. The right knee is dangerously close to the ground. But then he’s going to step back and he throws a pass downfield for, which is caught for an apparent touchdown. Now, there are many ways that a live ball can be declared dead. But, by rule, when a ball carrier simulates placing their knee on the ground, the ball becomes dead,” Shaw said.

The rule, he added, was partially with the intent of prevent a quarterback from being hit in a vulnerable position.

And the formation — Penn State was in the shotgun — doesn’t matter.

“And this was really put in place to keep a quarterback from faking a knee down, usually from under center, and then stepping back and throwing a pass downfield. But, it can be from any formation or any position. So, if the ball carrier simulates a knee down, which is what we had here, the officials should kill the play and declare the ball dead at that point,” Shaw said.

Instead the touchdown pass counted and Penn State, instead of potentially winning 34-13, won 41-13.

Penn State was hunting for, and found, a big play on the fake knee

Behind first-year starting quarterback Drew Allar and the running back duo of Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen, Penn State has become one of the best teams in the country. However, head coach James Franklin has seen his team also suffer from a lack of big plays on the offensive side of the ball.

Following Penn State’s win over Northwestern, Franklin shared some thoughts on the team’s lack of explosive plays on offense.

“I think there’s some things that we can do that we’ll work on in the bye week,” James Franklin said. “But, again, overall 41-13, a win, 1-0. Obviously, there’s going to be things that we need to critique this week and do some self-scouting and some studying.”

Franklin was initially asked about a lack of explosiveness in the running game. Singleton and Allen make for one of the toughest backfields in the game. However, Allen was injured in the Northwestern game. To this point in the season, Penn State is 15th in rushing offense, going for 210 yards per game.

For his part, Franklin does want to improve on the rushing explosiveness, but also on the passing explosiveness during the bye week.

“We’d like to be more explosive as well, although I thought we did improve this week. I still think there’s an opportunity for some more big plays in both the run game and the pass game and that will obviously be something that we’re gonna dig into deeply this week.”