The Eagles’ pre-snap formation on Nick Foles’ surprise touchdown catch in the first half of the Super Bowl looks illegal, if you just stare at a screen cap of their alignment:

My NESN colleague @chatham58 pointed out that the Eagles only had six players on the line on Foles' TD catch. He's right. pic.twitter.com/TRfB2teuMJ — Zack Cox (@ZackCoxNESN) February 5, 2018

Football’s rules say the offense has to have seven men on the line of scrimmage when the ball is snapped. The Eagles only appear to have six. At the top of your screen, receiver Alshon Jeffery starts at about the Patriots’ 3-yard line. The ball is snapped from the 1.5-yard line or so, making this look a lot like an illegal alignment.

The result of the play:

But Jeffery did what he had to do to make the play legal.

The “line of scrimmage” is a malleable concept. If we want to be really technical about what the line is, we could measure it down to the nanometer and catch players off the line, or even offsides, on every play. But that’d be ridiculous, and it doesn’t happen.

That’s why receivers often check in with officials before the snap to make sure their alignment is considered OK. And as long as that happens, the player isn’t going to be called for creating an illegal formation. Jeffery does that on this play. You can see him clearly point toward an official and, almost surely, get clearance for his placement.

Pro Football Talk reports that the NFL “views it as a judgment call, not a call that was clearly right or clearly wrong.” That makes sense. The judgment officials almost always make in these situations is not to flag the offense for an illegal formation.

This is a normal and legal play.

Patriots fans don’t have any legitimate beef about it.

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