Intentional grounding

Common card · No. 213152

In gridiron football, intentional grounding is a violation of the rules where "a passer...throws a forward pass without a realistic chance of completion." This typically happens when a quarterback about to be sacked passes the ball toward an area of the field with no eligible receiver. Without this rule, the quarterback could almost always avoid a sack by intentionally throwing an incomplete pass (which would stop the clock and return the ball to the line of scrimmage, avoiding any loss of yardage); instead, the penalty of intentional grounding effectively continues play as if the defense had succeeded in sacking the quarterback.

Read on Wikipedia