A team on offense is required to have at a minimum 7 players on the line of scrimmage when the ball is snapped. The outermost players on the line, usually a tight end or split end, are eligible receivers in any legal forward passing play. On any legal forward passing play the 5 innermost linemen are not eligible and must not advance downfield until after the ball is thrown, unless the ball is thrown behind the line of scrimmage(a screen pass). If they do it would be flagged as an ineligible receiver down field, like what happened to Illinois in their game against us a few times this year. On a screen in high school and college the ineligible receivers may advance downfield to block before the ball is thrown forward. We do this often with our bubble screen and RB screen plays. Used to do it a ton on the jailbreak screen with CJ Jones back in 2002.
In this case our long snapper was the outside player on the line on the right and was eligible. The 5 ineligible receivers pretty much stayed put to make sure we didn’t get an ineligible receiver penalty against us.
