NFL Forward Pass Rules: What Makes a Pass Legal
The NFL forward pass rules allow one forward pass per down, thrown from behind the line of scrimmage. Anything else costs five yards and the down.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished NFL Rules27 min read
- Forward passes per down
- 1
- Illegal forward pass
- 5 yards
- Backward passes per down
- Unlimited
- Five-yard setback dropped
- 1933
Fourth-and-goal at the 1, 38 seconds left in the first half of Super Bowl LII, and Philadelphia's quarterback was not going to touch the snap. The ball went straight to running back Corey Clement, who pitched it to tight end Trey Burton, who lobbed it to Nick Foles standing alone in the end zone at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. Three Eagles handled the ball and exactly one of them threw it forward. That is why the touchdown counted.
The NFL's forward pass rules sit in Rule 8, Section 1 of the league's rulebook, and they come down to three limits. The offense gets one forward pass per down. It has to be thrown from behind the line of scrimmage. And once the ball has crossed that line, carried or loose, no forward pass is allowed for the rest of the down, even if the ball comes back. Break any of the three and the result is an illegal forward pass: five yards and loss of down. Backward passes are a separate matter. There is no limit on those at all.
One forward pass per down, from behind the line: the three limits in Rule 8
Article 2 of the section states the allowance in a single sentence: the offensive team may make one forward pass from behind the line during each down. The next sentence closes the door behind a runner. If the ball, in a player's possession or loose, crosses the line of scrimmage, a forward pass is no longer permitted, and it does not matter that the ball returns behind the line before it is thrown.
Each limit answers a different temptation.
The one-pass limit stops an offense from playing catch across the backfield until somebody comes open. It counts throws, not completions. A quarterback whose pass is batted straight back into his hands has used the down's only forward pass, and he is now a runner with a football and nowhere legal to throw it except backward.
The behind-the-line limit keeps the pass a play that begins in the backfield. A scrambler may run to within an inch of the line and still throw. He may not run past it and throw.
The third limit is the one fans forget. A quarterback who breaks the pocket, gets two yards downfield, sees a linebacker closing and retreats behind the line has not recovered his right to pass. The ball crossed. A fumble that rolls beyond the line and is knocked back has the same effect. From that moment the offense is playing a running down, whatever the passer's feet are doing.
The rule speaks only of the offense, meaning the team that put the ball in play. The defense never has a legal forward pass, and neither does a team that gains the ball in the middle of a down, a point that matters a great deal on the last play of a game and gets its own section below.
- 1Forward passes allowed per down
- 5Yards marked off for an illegal one
- 0Forward passes allowed after a change of possession
- 1Other players who must touch the ball before the passer may catch it
Taken from Rule 8, Section 1 of the NFL rulebook. The yardage is the standard enforcement for an illegal forward pass by the offense.
College football shares all three limits. The NCAA writes them in Rule 7 of its own book and uses the phrase "neutral zone" where the NFL says "line," but a second forward pass, a pass from beyond the line and a pass after the ball has been beyond it are illegal on Saturdays for the same reasons. Where the two books part company is in enforcement, covered further down, and in a long list of other places set out in our guide to the differences between the college and pro rulebooks.
Forward or backward: where the ball lands against where it left the hand
Nothing in the definition mentions which way the passer is facing, how he moves his arm, or what he meant to do. Article 1 gives two main tests, and both are about yard lines. (A third clause, on the deliberate forward fumble, comes up later on this page.) A pass is forward if the ball initially moves toward the opponent's goal line after it leaves the passer's hand, or if it first strikes the ground, a player, an official or anything else at a point nearer the opponent's goal line than the point where it was released.
So the measurement is against the field. This catches people out on option pitches and downfield laterals, because a runner at full speed who flips the ball sideways relative to his own body has still given it his forward momentum. Thrown from the 30 and caught at the 31, it is a forward pass, however flat it looked from the stands and however far behind the pitcher's shoulder the receiver seemed to be.
Why a pass along the yard line counts as backward
The definitions section of the rulebook settles the tie. A pass is backward if the yard line where it is first touched is parallel to or behind the yard line where it left the hand. Level is backward. There is no third category of "sideways" in the book, and the word "lateral" does not appear as a term of art; broadcasters use it, officials say "backward pass."
The most argued example in league history turned on exactly this clause. On January 8, 2000, in an AFC wild-card game at Nashville, Buffalo kicked off with 16 seconds left and a 16-15 lead. Tennessee's Frank Wycheck took a handoff from Lorenzo Neal, turned and threw the ball across the field to Kevin Dyson, who ran 75 yards for the winning touchdown. Referee Phil Luckett reviewed it and let the ruling stand. Wycheck released the ball at about his own 25 and Dyson gathered it at about the same stripe. A throw along the yard line is a backward pass, and the Music City Miracle went into the record as a kickoff return.
| Question | Forward pass | Backward pass |
|---|---|---|
| How many per down | One, by the offense only | No limit, by either team |
| Where it may be thrown from | Behind the line of scrimmage | Anywhere on the field |
| If it hits the ground | Incomplete, ball dead | Live ball |
| Who may recover a loose one | Nobody, the down is over | Any player on either team |
| How it is scored if caught and run | A completion and a reception | No completion and no reception; a pitch caught behind the line counts as a rush |
Both the direction of a pass and the question of whether a loose ball was a pass at all are reviewable, which is the subject of our explainer on how NFL replay and coaches' challenges work.
The line-of-scrimmage test: the whole body and the ball
A passer is beyond the line only when all of him is. The rulebook's wording is that a forward pass is thrown from beyond the line of scrimmage if the passer's entire body and the ball are beyond the line when the ball is released, and it adds that this holds whether he is airborne or touching the ground.
Read that from the offense's side and it is generous. One trailing heel on the stripe at release keeps the pass legal. So does a throw made with both feet past the line by a quarterback who is leaning back far enough that his hip has not cleared it. A passer who jumps from behind the line and lets go in the air is judged by where his body is at release, not where he took off or where he lands.
The line in question is not the yellow stripe television draws, which is a graphic and has no standing. It is the plane through the forward point of the ball as it lay before the snap, and the officials responsible for it are the two on the wings, the down judge and the line judge, who start every play straddling it. On a scramble they are a long way from the passer, which is why the call so often ends up on a monitor.
Replay can fix it in either direction. A flag for a pass beyond the line can be picked up after review, and a throw that drew no flag can be challenged by the defense. The reviewer is looking for one frame, the last one in which the ball is in the hand, and for any part of the passer on or behind the plane in that frame.
There is a second way to fail this test, and it has nothing to do with where the passer stands when he throws. A quarterback who crosses the line completely with the ball and then backs up behind it has thrown an illegal pass under the other clause, the one about the ball having crossed. Officials treat the two as different fouls because the rulebook enforces them from different places.
The illegal forward pass penalty: five yards, the down, and two different spots
Every illegal forward pass by the offense costs five yards. What changes from one version to the next is where the five yards are walked off from.
| Illegal pass | Yardage | Loss of down | Enforced from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thrown with the passer's body and the ball beyond the line | 5 | Yes | The spot where the ball was released |
| Second forward pass from behind the line | 5 | Yes | The previous spot |
| Thrown after the ball crossed the line and came back | 5 | Yes | The previous spot |
| Thrown after a change of possession | 5 | Not applicable | The spot where the ball was released |
Work one through. Second-and-8 at the offense's own 40, so the line to gain is the 48. The quarterback scrambles, lets go from the 42 with his whole body past the line, and the pass is caught at midfield. The completion is wiped out. Five yards from the 42 is the 37, the down counts, and it is third-and-11.
Now the same situation with a different mistake. The quarterback throws a quick screen that travels a yard forward, and the receiver, still behind the line, heaves it downfield. That is a second forward pass. Five yards from the previous spot puts the ball at the 35, and with the down gone it is third-and-13.
"Loss of down" does not mean an extra down is taken away. It means the down that was just played counts, where most five-yard fouls would have it replayed. On fourth down the effect is final: the defense accepts and takes the ball.
The loss of down on the two behind-the-line versions is a relatively recent tightening, and it is worth knowing because older explanations still say otherwise. Through the 2010s the book replayed the down for a second forward pass thrown from behind the line, which meant a quarterback in the grasp could flip an illegal second throw at somebody's feet and pay five yards for what would have been a ten-yard sack. As the penalty line now reads, that escape costs the down too.
What the defense may do with the flag
An illegal forward pass is a live-ball foul. The play runs, and a pass thrown from three yards past the line can be intercepted like any other. When that happens the defense declines and keeps the ball.
Late in a half there is a clock consequence as well. An illegal forward pass is on the short list of acts in Rule 4, Section 7 that carry a ten-second runoff when the game clock is running after the two-minute warning, alongside intentional grounding and a backward pass that goes out of bounds. The logic is the same for all of them: an offense should not be able to stop the clock by breaking a rule. The defense may decline the runoff, and the offense can avoid it by spending a timeout.
In college the arithmetic is simpler and a little harsher. The NCAA enforces every illegal forward pass by the offense five yards from the spot of the foul with loss of down, so a second pass thrown from eight yards deep in the backfield is marked off from there and not from the line.
Flea-flickers and receiver passes: trick plays that stay inside the rule
Every legal gadget play is built on the same arithmetic. However many times the ball changes hands, the number of forward throws must come to one.
The flea-flicker gets there with a handoff, a backward toss and a pass. The quarterback hands to a running back heading into the line, the back stops and pitches the ball back to him, and the quarterback throws deep against safeties who have stepped up to stop the run. A handoff is not a pass. The pitch travels backward. The count is one.
The receiver pass, or double pass, needs more care. The quarterback throws to a wide receiver who is standing behind him, and the receiver throws downfield. For that second throw to be legal the first has to be backward, which is why coaches drill the receiver to set up a clear yard or two deeper than the spot the quarterback throws from. If the first throw drifts forward by a foot, the play has used its forward pass and the big completion comes back.
The Philly Special added a snap that skipped the quarterback altogether.
- Direct snapThe center snaps to running back Corey Clement. A snap is a backward pass by definition, so nothing has been used up.
- Pitch to the tight endClement tosses the ball to Trey Burton, who is running behind him. Backward again.
- The one forward passBurton throws from behind the line to quarterback Nick Foles, who lined up in the backfield and is an eligible receiver.
- TouchdownFoles catches it in the end zone. One forward pass on the down, thrown from behind the line.
Super Bowl LII, February 4, 2018, fourth-and-goal from the 1. Only the last exchange is a forward pass, which is what kept the play legal under Rule 8.
The hook-and-lateral runs the sequence the other way round: a forward pass to a receiver on a curl, who pitches backward to a trailing teammate. Because the forward pass comes first and everything after it goes backward, the play is legal anywhere on the field.
What an offense cannot do is throw forward twice in any order. A screen pass caught behind the line and thrown again is the textbook second forward pass. So is the ball a defensive lineman bats back to a quarterback who then tries a second attempt. The design of the screen game and the linemen who release in front of it is shaped by this: the ball goes forward once, early, and the rest is running and blocking.
One more constraint sits behind all of these. The man who catches the forward pass has to be eligible, and the linemen have to stay near the line until the ball is thrown, which is the business of the ineligible receiver downfield rule.
Backward passes: unlimited, live on the ground and anyone's ball
A runner may throw a backward pass at any time. Any runner: a quarterback, a returner, a defensive back twenty yards into an interception return. There is no cap on the number in a down and no place on the field where it becomes illegal.
The price of that freedom is paid when one is dropped. A forward pass that hits the turf is over. A backward pass that hits the turf is a loose ball, and any player on either side may pick it up and run. This is the difference that turns a harmless-looking swing pass into a defensive touchdown a few times a season, when a throw to the flat goes a half-yard backward, bounces, and the receiver walks away from it thinking the play is dead.
New England supplied the costliest example in recent memory. On December 18, 2022, at Las Vegas, the score was 24-24 with time expiring in regulation. Rhamondre Stevenson took a handoff, ran and pitched to Jakobi Meyers, and Meyers threw the ball back across the field toward his quarterback. Raiders edge rusher Chandler Jones caught it instead and ran 48 yards for the winning score. Nothing about the sequence was illegal. Two backward passes, the second one to the wrong team.
A few details of the rule are worth having straight.
A backward pass that goes out of bounds is dead where it crossed the sideline and belongs to the team that threw it, so a wild pitch usually costs yards and not the ball. If it goes out of bounds behind the passing team's own goal line, it is a safety, as set out in our guide to how a safety is scored in the NFL.
The league's restriction on advancing a teammate's fumble, which applies on fourth down and after the two-minute warning, is written about fumbles. A backward pass is a separate act under Rule 8, and one that hits the ground may be recovered and advanced by any player.
After the two-minute warning, a backward pass that goes out of bounds before a change of possession is treated as an act that conserves time. The penalty is loss of down and five yards, and it carries the ten-second runoff described above.
The snap itself is a backward pass. That is why a shotgun snap that sails past the quarterback is a free ball for anybody and not an incompletion.
Pass or fumble: the hand starting forward
A quarterback is hit as he throws and the ball squirts loose. Whether that is an incomplete pass or a fumble decides, more often than any other single ruling, who has the ball on the next snap.
The rulebook's test is the hand. When a player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his hand starts a forward pass. From the instant the hand begins to come forward with the ball in it, whatever happens next is a pass. If contact from a defender materially affects the passer after his throwing motion has begun and the ball comes out, the book says it is a forward pass regardless of where the ball strikes the ground or a player. It can flutter backward and land five yards behind him and it is still incomplete.
Before the hand starts forward, everything is a fumble. The pass rusher who gets his hand on the ball with the quarterback's arm still cocked has produced a strip-sack.
The pump fake is where the two rulings sit closest together. On the way forward, the fake is a throwing motion like any other, and a ball knocked out of the hand during it is an incomplete pass. On the way back, the same arm with the same ball belongs to a runner. A quarterback who pumps twice crosses that boundary four times in about a second.
The difficult cases are the ones in between, and the book now names two of them. If the player loses possession while bringing the ball back toward his body after a pump, it is a fumble. If he loses it while re-cocking his arm for another try, it is a fumble. The first of those sentences dates from 2013. For the fourteen seasons before that, a ball lost on the way back to the body was an incomplete pass, and the story of that clause, including the playoff game it decided, is told in our guide to the tuck rule and its repeal.
- Was the ball in his controlIf the passer had already lost his grip before the hand moved, there was no pass to start.
- Had the hand started forwardBall out before forward movement begins is a fumble. Ball out after it begins moves to the next question.
- Was he still throwingHand coming forward in the throwing motion and the ball comes out, with or without contact, is a forward pass.
- Was he bringing it backBall lost while tucking it back toward the body or re-cocking the arm is a fumble.
- ResultA pass that hits the ground is dead and the offense keeps the ball. A fumble is live and belongs to whoever recovers it.
The order of questions follows the forward pass definition in Rule 8, Section 1. Replay applies the same sequence, frame by frame.
A quarterback under pressure who gets the ball out legally still has to throw it somewhere defensible, which is where intentional grounding and the tackle-box exception take over from the rules on this page.
Who may touch a forward pass first
Eligibility is a rule about the first touch. Before anyone has touched a forward pass, only certain players may legally be the one to do it.
| Player | Eligible to touch a forward pass first? |
|---|---|
| Any defensive player | Yes, always |
| Offensive player on either end of the line with an eligible number | Yes |
| Offensive player at least one yard behind the line at the snap with an eligible number | Yes |
| Quarterback who took the snap from under center | No |
| Center, guard or tackle, or anyone wearing 50 to 79 or 90 to 99 who has not reported | No |
Eligible numbers in the NFL run from 0 to 49 and from 80 to 89. A player wearing a lineman's number can become eligible for a play by reporting to the referee and lining up in an eligible position, which is how a sixth offensive lineman ends up catching a one-yard touchdown as a "tackle eligible" every so often.
The T-formation quarterback, the one with his hands under the center, is the odd entry. He is in the backfield and wears an eligible number, and the rule excludes him anyway. A quarterback in the shotgun is treated like any other back. This is the distinction the Eagles used in Minneapolis: Foles started in the gun, so he was eligible when Burton looked for him. A quarterback who leaves the center and resets elsewhere before the snap can become eligible, but that involves the pre-snap rules on shifts, motion and the one-second stop, which have tripped up more than one trick play.
The touch that opens the pass to everyone
Once a forward pass has been touched by any defender, or by any eligible offensive player, every offensive player becomes eligible. The guard who catches a deflection off a linebacker's hands has made a legal reception. So has the tackle who gathers in a ball that glanced off his own tight end.
If an ineligible player is the first to touch a pass and does it on purpose, the foul is illegal touching: five yards. The rule also covers an eligible receiver who steps out of bounds and comes back in to be the first to touch the ball, which the current book penalizes with loss of down at the previous spot.
Touching is only the first half of a reception. Whether the player who touched it went on to complete the process is a different rule with a longer and more contentious history, and our explainer on what counts as a catch in the NFL picks up where this one stops.
Can a quarterback catch his own pass: Mariota at Arrowhead
January 6, 2018, Arrowhead Stadium, an AFC wild-card game. Tennessee trailed Kansas City 21-3 at halftime and had driven to third-and-goal at the 6 in the third quarter. Marcus Mariota rolled left and threw toward the goal line. Cornerback Darrelle Revis got a hand up and batted the ball back the way it came. Mariota, still moving, caught it short of the goal line and dove inside the pylon.
Touchdown, and a legal one. The moment Revis touched the pass, every Titan on the field was eligible, the man who threw it included. Mariota had not thrown a second forward pass; he had caught the only one and run with it. The official scoring credited him with a six-yard touchdown pass and a six-yard touchdown reception on the same play, the first time in an NFL playoff game that a quarterback had thrown a scoring pass to himself. Tennessee won 22-21.
It had happened once before in the regular season. Minnesota's Brad Johnson caught his own deflected pass and scored against Carolina in 1997.
Revis did not mean to help. It does not matter. The rule asks only whether a defender touched the ball, and a deflection off a helmet or a fingertip opens the pass to everyone exactly as a deliberate bat does.
The rule has an edge that Mariota did not come near. A passer who catches his own batted ball may run. He may pitch it backward. He may not throw it forward again, because the down's single forward pass is already spent. A quarterback who snatches a deflection behind the line and reflexively fires it downfield has committed the second-forward-pass foul, and the fact that the first attempt never got past a defensive tackle's forearm does not help him.
Four weeks later Foles caught his touchdown in the Super Bowl, and the two plays get mentioned together. In the rulebook they are different things. Mariota caught a pass he threw, made legal by a defender's touch. Foles caught a pass somebody else threw, made legal by where he lined up.
The shovel pass and the intentional forward fumble
Two plays look like something other than a forward pass and are ruled as one.
The first is the shovel pass, along with its cousin the touch pass on a jet sweep. The quarterback takes the snap and flips the ball a yard or two forward, underhand, to a back or receiver crossing in front of him. It looks like a handoff. It functions as a handoff. Because the ball leaves one player's hand and travels forward through the air to another, it is a forward pass, with everything that follows from that.
If the receiver drops it, the ball is dead and the down is over. No scramble for a loose football. For a play-caller that is the whole attraction: the motion of a pitch with none of the risk of a pitch. It also means the offense has used its forward pass, so there is no throwing off a touch-pass sweep once the runner has the ball. The statistics follow the rule too: the quarterback is credited with a completion on a play where the ball traveled eighteen inches.
The fumble that is really a pass
The second play is the one the rulebook had to be amended to deal with. On September 10, 1978, at San Diego, Oakland trailed the Chargers 20-14 with ten seconds left and the ball at the San Diego 14. Ken Stabler dropped back, was wrapped up by linebacker Woodrow Lowe, and sent the ball rolling forward. Running back Pete Banaszak reached it near the 12 and knocked it on toward the goal line. Tight end Dave Casper kicked it across and fell on it in the end zone. The officials ruled a fumble, a recovery and a touchdown, and the Raiders won 21-20. The play has been called the Holy Roller ever since.
The rulebook already said, and still says, that an intentional fumble forward is a forward pass. Had the crew judged Stabler's release to be deliberate, it was an incomplete pass and the game was over. They judged it a fumble, and Stabler later said he had let the ball go on purpose.
The league did not rely on officials reading minds a second time. Before the 1979 season it added the restriction that survives today: on fourth down, and at any time after the two-minute warning, a fumble may be advanced only by the player who fumbled it. If a teammate recovers, the ball is dead and is spotted no farther forward than the spot of the fumble. The related question of what happens when a fumble rolls on through the end zone is covered in our guide to the touchback rule on fumbles out of the end zone.
No forward pass after a change of possession: why the lateral chain goes backward
The allowance in Rule 8 belongs to the offense on a scrimmage down, and it does not survive a turnover. A team that intercepts a pass, recovers a fumble or fields a kick has no forward pass on that down. Not one. Every exchange on a return has to be backward.
The penalty is five yards from the spot where the illegal pass was thrown. There is no loss of down to assess, because the series that follows belongs to the returning team in any case; the yardage is simply marked off and they start their drive from there. A touchdown scored on the play comes back.
This is the rule that shapes the last play of a desperate game. With no time left, an offense that needs a touchdown from its own 30 will usually throw one legal forward pass to the middle of the field and then start pitching the ball. Each of those pitches has to go backward, because the forward pass has been used. Miami did it properly on December 9, 2018: Ryan Tannehill threw to Kenny Stills, Stills pitched back to DeVante Parker, Parker pitched back to Kenyan Drake, and Drake ran the last stretch of a 69-yard touchdown that beat New England 34-33. One forward pass and two backward ones. New Orleans ran a longer version at Jacksonville on December 21, 2003, a 75-yard score with three backward passes after the completion, and then missed the extra point and lost 20-19.
A kickoff return has even less to work with, since no legal forward pass exists on the down in the first place. That is why the direction of Wycheck's throw in Nashville mattered so much. Had the review found the ball moved forward, the touchdown would have come off the board and Tennessee would have had the ball back near its own 20 with almost no time left.
When one of these chains goes wrong on the final play, the flag ends the game. The period is not extended for a foul by the team with the ball, so an illegal forward pass on a lateral play with the clock at zero wipes out any score and sends both teams to the locker room.
1933: the year the NFL let the passer throw from anywhere behind the line
For its first thirteen seasons the NFL played under the college rulebook, and the college rulebook did not trust the forward pass. The colleges had legalized it in 1906 and then hedged it with restrictions for decades, a history told in our guide to how football came to allow the forward pass. The restriction that mattered most to the professionals was this one: the passer had to be at least five yards behind the line of scrimmage when he threw.
Five yards is a long way. It ruled out the quick pass off a run fake at the line, and it gave defenses a simple read, since a back who had not dropped deep could not be about to throw.
The rule broke in public on December 18, 1932. The Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans had finished level at the top of the standings, and the league arranged an extra game to settle the title. Bitter weather moved it indoors to Chicago Stadium, onto a field only 60 yards long between the goal lines. In the fourth quarter Bronko Nagurski took a handoff, started toward the line, stepped back and threw a short touchdown pass to Red Grange. Portsmouth protested that Nagurski had not been five yards deep. The touchdown stood, and the Bears won 9-0.
Two months later the owners rewrote their game. On February 25, 1933, the NFL broke from the college rules for the first time and made the forward pass legal from anywhere behind the line of scrimmage. In the same package the goal posts moved up from the end line to the goal line and the ball was to be brought in to hash marks when a play ended near the sideline.
The league's first scheduled championship game, played that December at Wrigley Field, showed what the new rule allowed. The Bears' winning touchdown against the New York Giants came on a jump pass by Nagurski from just behind the line to end Bill Hewitt, who pitched the ball backward to Bill Karr for the score. A forward pass thrown from a spot that would have been illegal a year earlier, followed by a backward pass. Chicago won 23-21.
The longer effect was to separate the professional game from the college one. A passer who could throw from one yard deep could threaten the run and the pass on the same step, and offenses were built around that threat for the first time. The receivers and quarterbacks who defined the next decade, Don Hutson arriving in Green Bay in 1935 and Sammy Baugh in Washington in 1937, played in a league whose rules had been rewritten to suit them. The colleges kept the five-yard requirement into the 1940s. The job that grew out of the 1933 change is described in our guide to what an NFL quarterback is responsible for, and the rest of the sport's rules and tactics coverage is collected on the American football section of the site.