It was Week 1 of the 2023 season when the Miami Dolphins were believed to have started an offensive trend that would later be called “speed motion” or “cheat motion.” Under this strategy, offensive players in motion would build momentum and lean toward the line of scrimmage even before the center snapped the ball.
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Wide receiver Tyreek Hill was believed to have used it early on, with the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams later utilizing it to their offensive advantage. However, that recently led Tyler DeSena, a freelance contributor for the Dolphins on SI, to claim that NFL offenses could be cheating by using this “potentially illegal” strategy at the time of the snap.
However, DeSena’s commentary prompted Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce to respond, as he pushed back against the claim and admitted that the move isn’t illegal at all.
“There is nothing illegal about these motions,” Kelce wrote. “He isn’t going forward until the ball is snapped, his shin angles don’t matter, his intent to time the snap and move forward doesn’t matter. All that matters is his body moving forward, which it very clearly isn’t.
“It’s a pretty clear rule, that sometimes gets missed when teams attempt to snap it with timing like this. Neither of these instances are good examples of when they do miss time it and the motion player is moving forward. If you don’t like the rule as it is, what would you change about it?”
In the NFL, a player can move sideways or backward before the snap, but they aren’t allowed to move forward toward the line of scrimmage, unlike the CFL. The reason is that a player moving forward already has momentum, which can give the offense an unfair advantage when blocking.
In his commentary, DeSena discussed the 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk. Before the snap, Juszczyk moves toward the line and appears to be slightly moving downhill/forward.
However, that tactic is particularly valuable for the 49ers because Juszczyk can use his pre-snap movement to generate momentum before becoming a lead blocker. At 235 pounds, the veteran fullback can turn that momentum into additional force at the point of contact, helping create space for the running game.
DeSena, meanwhile, believes that if he is genuinely moving forward when the ball is snapped, that should be an illegal motion penalty.
Jason Kelce, however, isn’t on board with this claim.
While the viral analysis focused on the fullback’s shin angles and apparent intention to move downhill as evidence that Juszczyk could be moving illegally, Kelce argued that neither factor determines whether a penalty has occurred.
The only question is whether Juszczyk’s body is actually moving toward the line of scrimmage when the ball is snapped, and Kelce believes the footage clearly shows that it isn’t.
At the same time, the controversy surrounding Kyle Juszczyk’s pre-snap motion isn’t entirely new.
The league has spent the past few seasons dealing with the rise of so-called “speed motion” or “cheat motion,” in which offensive players attempt to build momentum before the snap. The NFL clarified its motion rules in 2024, allowing backfield players to continue moving before the snap as long as their movement isn’t abrupt or toward the line of scrimmage.
So that’s where things stand. Unlike the CFL, the NFL doesn’t allow the players to move forward toward the line of scrimmage. While some around the league could claim the NFL offenses are using it as an advantage by moving sideways, others, including Jason Kelce, aren’t on board with it at all.