Officiating at the End of Game

RichB said

I don’t understand the thought behind it being intentional grounding if the clock is stopped. What possible benefit or competitive advantage are you gaining by wasting one of your downs when you don’t need to do so. Any ideas?

Click to expand...

This is a great point except that it would arguably make the rule subjective which is something the league attempts to minimize whenever possible. I remember that the spike rule came into existence in the late 80s because teams would throw the ball out of bounds to stop the clock and the thought was that it was an unnecessary waste of time so they allowed for the spike.