Should the DeAngelo Hall Touchdown Have Happened?

I’ve put my Fatpickled.com research staff (Google & Bud Light) to work trying to find an exact interpretation of the NFL rules regarding 10 second run offs in the final 2 minutes of each half. Why am I researching this? I’m not convinced the DeAngleo Hall touchdown should have ever happened.

Offensive penalties that require clock and play stoppages include a ten second runoff from the game clock in addition to the usual penalty. The game clock starts running again after the ball is set. The game clock runoff can be nullified if the team uses a timeout. The half automatically ends if the infraction occurs with less than ten seconds remaining and the violating team has no time outs to use.

My understanding of the above is this…if a team does not have a time out left and they commit a penalty, 10 seconds are run off the clock. If there’s less than 10 seconds left on the game clock, the half/game is over. The Cowboys had no time outs left and committed a holding penalty…yes it was Alex Barron, with 4 seconds remaining in the 1st half. We all know what happened next, but should that play even have been allowed to happen?

I’ve looked over several websites including the rule book located at NFL.com. It’s not really clear to me. Hopefully someone reading this will be able to get me a definitive answer. No matter what, I’m happy things turned out the way they did.

Cheers and Hail