Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Lateral Stat Weirdness, Infinite Yards Per Catch?

After Dave Stala's lateral to Maurice Mann in the Labour Day game against Montreal, I was wondering how the stats work for laterals. I assume that after a lateral, the player receiving the lateral gets credit in receiving yards (or maybe running yards if the play was originally a handoff). What I'm wondering now is what happens statwise if you have no receptions yourself and receive the lateral. Mann had a few receptions in the game and I assumed the lateral yards were included in his yardage total. What if he had no receptions? Could one get receiving yards and no receptions in a game? Infinite yards per catch? Maybe programmers working with football stats need to watch for divide by zero errors.

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