Football Penalties List

What are the penalties and fouls in football? Here is a complete list of penalties across all of the leagues and what they result in during a game.

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Penalties List

In football, when a team commits an infraction against the rules of the game a foul will be called and a penalty will be assessed. Penalties can have varying levels of punishment for teams including loss or gain of yardage, automatic 1st downs, or even ejection. Referees will usually signal penalties by throwing a yellow flag and using the corresponding hand motion for the respective penalty. Most penalties are common throughout the sport of football. However, some penalties may be different at varying levels of the game. The following is a list of penalties in football.

Defensive Penalties

These penalties can only be committed by the defense team, the severity of the penalty varies for each. Defensive penalties usually result in the offensive gaining yards or an automatic 1st down.

Defensive holding
Defensive offside
Defensive pass interference
Defensive too many men on field
Encroachment
Fair catch interference
Leaping
Leverage
Illegal contact
Neutral zone infraction
Roughing the kicker
Roughing the passer
Running into the kicker
Kickoff out of bounds

Offensive Penalties

These penalties can only be committed by the offensive team, the severity of the penalty varies for each. Offensive penalties usually result in a loss of yardage.

Offensive holding
Offensive offside
Offensive too many men on field
False start
Illegal forward handoff
Illegal forward pass
Illegal motion
Illegal touch kick
Illegal touch pass
Ineligible downfield kick
Ineligible downfield pass
Intentional grounding
Invalid fair catch signal
Kick catch interference

Offensive or Defensive Penalties

These penalties can be committed on either the offensive or defensive side of the ball and many can happen in dead ball situations. The severity of the penalty varies with each.