Punt Hits Video Screen at New Cowboys Stadium

It looks like the Dallas Cowboys‘ new $1.2 billion video screen is an epic fail.

Tennessee Titans rookie punter A.J. Trapasso’s punt in the third quarter of the new stadium’s opening game hit one of the 60-yard-long high-def video screens that hang approximately 90 feet above the football field.

At first, NFL officials didn’t realize what had occurred until Titans head coach Jeff Fisher tossed the red challenge flag.

By rule, the ball was dead and fourth down ended up being replayed. Trapasso’s ensuing kick skimmed just to the side of the board without touching it.

Trapasso and veteran Titans punter Craig Hentrich both hit the screen during pregame warmups, but Cowboys owner Jerry Jones says there are no plans to raise to the massive screens any higher.

“That’s not the point. How high is high if somebody just wants to sit there and kick straight up? If you look at how you punt the football, unless you’re trying to hit the scoreboard, you punt the ball to get downfield. You certainly want to get some hangtime, but you punt the ball to get downfield, and you sure don’t punt the ball down the middle. You punt it off to the side.”

Clearly, this comes from Jones’ years of experience punting a football.

Titans punter, Craig Hentrich, thinks leaving the screen where it is is a bad idea…

“I hit it probably a dozen times in pregame,” Hentrich said. “Probably somewhere around a five-second punt is going to hit it and some of the guys in the league wouldn’t be able to punt here if it’s not raised, they’d just be non-stop hitting it. I don’t know what the people were thinking. I guess they should have tested things out before they put that thing in place. It’ll have to be raised.”

As it turns out, Mike Periera, the NFL’s director of officiating, has said that the league will need to look into the issue this week. It seems that a punter could intentionally try to hit the video screen in order to run out the clock at the end of a half. When a down is replayed, the clock doesn’t reset.