Late in a game, with no timeouts, a receiver catches the ball, gets a few yards upfield, but realizes he can't get out of bounds before being tackled. Can he purposefully fumble the ball out of bounds to stop the clock? Thanks! -- Hank Jones, Joliet
A team is not permitted to conserve time inside of one minute of either half by throwing a backward pass out-of-bounds or by throwing an illegal forward pass in order to stop the clock. For illegally conserving time, the penalty is loss of five yards and a ten-second runoff of the clock will be administered by the referee under certain circumstances. In short, the answer to your question is, "No."