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There doesn't seem to be any definitive amount of time that the defense has to substitute when an offense brings in a sub.

I agree but what is the solution? Back in the old days -- yanno, when offenses still huddled -- they introduced the too-many-men-in-the-huddle rule to prevent offenses from trying to foil defenses with late substitutions. But that rule doesn't apply when the offense doesn't huddle. So while it's definitely not fair for an official to step in and prevent an offense from snapping as the play clock is running out, there would otherwise be nothing to stop an offense from standing around until the play clock gets down to 4 or 5 seconds and then suddenly changing out players and snapping quickly to prevent the defense from adjusting.

I honestly don't know what the solution is. But it's not being applied evenly right now. It's too subjective. Who was it that ran on the FG team for a last-second FG a couple of weeks ago? By rule, the official should've stood over the ball and allowed time to expire, but they didn't in that situation.

It was TCU against Baylor, I think. Actually, by rule in that situation, the ref does not stand over the ball. The rule says that the D must anticipate that the offense will kick and be ready to substitute in a timely manner to give the offense a chance to attempt the FG.

Right. Shows how lazy I am.  :biggrin:

I say that there should be no substitutions after there are 10 seconds left on the play clock. Before that, if one side substitutes, the other side has 10 seconds to substitute.


That way, if an offense brought in a player with 11 seconds left on the play clock, the defense would have until there was 1 second left on the play clock.

I think that this would encourage teams to substitute earlier.  With this system, think about what would happen as time ran out in the game.