Posted October 8th, 2003 @ 10PM Eastern Time

Updated October 10th, 2003 @ 12:30AM Eastern Time to include URL to Mercury News Article

There's certainly been a lot of debate over the McCardell's second TD in the week #5 MNF game. That's not too surprising, as we believe that the last time that a play like this occurred was week #11 of the 1997 season.

First, a little explanation of the purpose of this document. It is not meant to serve as a definitive end-all, be-all answer as to how to score this play - based on all of the discussions and feedback we've received in the last two days, we are convinced that there is no one-size-fits all answer. This document is not meant to convince you we are right in our decision on how to score this play. Only you, and your league-mates, can decide the right way to score this play for your league.

This document is simply meant to further clarify our position, and describe what modifications we've made to our system to accomodate those who do not agree with our position and were unwilling or unable to follow our prior instructions regarding how to use the "Score Adjuster" for manually over-riding our scoring decision.

We've taken more than 36 hours to look at all the evidence since our initial decision was issued just a couple of hours after the game was over, talked to a variety of people, read countless message board posts both on our own board as well as other message boards, and have come to the following conclusion.

The NFL's official statistician is Elias Sports Bureau. We've personally spoken with their representatives and they've told us that their OFFICIAL ruling on the play was that it was a Fumble Recovery TD. They haven't and we've been told won't specify if it's an offensive or defensive fumble recovery TD - it is considered a "miscellaneous play" as far as the NFL is concerned. The one web page that shows this most clearly is the the NFL's Gamebook of that game, where that fumble is listed under the "Misc" heading, not the "Regular Defensive Play" or "Special Teams" heading. The differentiation between "offense" and "defense" is only relevant to fantasy football in this case, and is not required by their contract with the NFL. In short, contrary to many posts you might have read on the various message boards discussing this topic, the NFL does not officially characterize this as either an Offensive or Defensive play, regardless of what statistics you might find on the NFL.com site or other sites that imply (but never state) otherwise.

For further verification of this official decision, please read this San Jose Mercury News article.

Simply stated, one of the more common arguments that we've seen as an objection to scoring this as an offensive fumble recovery touchdown has been "The NFL considers this a defensive touchdown - how can you over-ride the NFL's decision?" is an invalid argument. The NFL does not consider this a defensive touchdown.

After looking at all of the facts, we still hold the opinion that this play should be properly scored as an Offensive Fumble Recovery TD for McCardell and not for the TBB DT position (see this page for our initial justification of this, which basically boiled down to the fact that the Tampa Bay offensive unit was on the field at the time the play happened), and based on the disucssions we've seen so far, the majority of our customers share that opinion.

However, we realize that some leagues may either have rules explicitly contrary to this decision (if that's the case, we truly admire your foresight!), or interpret the facts differently and prefer to award this as a Defensive Fumble Recovery TD for the TBB DT, and didn't find the "Score Adjuster" solution previously outlined acceptable. As a result we will, starting at 10pm Eastern time today (October 8th, 2003) offer all commissioners the option to have their week 5 results recalculated by having this touchdown scored as if it were a Defensive Fumble Recovery TD. We will also be adding a home page message for all league commissioners detailing the stat changes and allowing them the ability to make this change for their league. By default, if a commissioner does nothing, the system will continue to score this event as an offensive fumble recovery.

If you choose to take advantage of this offer, please be aware of a few things:

  1. Once you click on the appropriate link on your league home page, it can take up to an hour for your week 5 results to be recalculated.
  2. All owners in your league will get an email regarding those updated results.
  3. You should remove any previously entered score adjustments you might have entered to account for this event.
  4. With this change to making this a Defensive Fumble Recovery Touchdown, if you'd also like to award the points to Keenan McCardell, you must be sure your league scoring system is set up to award wide receivers points for Defensive Fumble Recovery touchdowns.
In addition, McCardell has been awarded a fumble recovery on the play which has also been counted as part of the TBB team fumble recoveries. Since the NFL does not break fumbles out in it's team stats (the term TEAM implies that these are the stats generated by the entire team), his fumble recovery would be included in the team's total. Many leagues have the Fumble Recovery rule defined for the DT position. This does NOT mean that we feel this was a DEFENSIVE fumble recovery. It merely means that he has a fumble recovery for the team and your league may have awarded this to the DT position. You can always use the Score Adjuster to account for this discrepancy.