But if in particular you delay the game by not bringing your team out fast enough at the start of the game, or if your team captain doesn’t take the field in a timely manner for the coin toss, the rulebook says you automatically forfeit the toss and the other team is given the choice of whether to receive. You know what happens if you don’t get the right players on the field fast enough, right? You’re called for delay of game, which usually means a 5 yard penalty. A Team Can Automatically Lose the Coin Toss I suspect someday we’ll see some points scored from 65 yards or more on one of these.ġ4. Nevertheless, because there’s no snap to worry about, and because the defense must line up at least 10 yards away, it’s much easier for the kicker to get a running start and really take a whack at the ball. A free kick is basically a kickoff, although in a fair-catch kick you’re not allowed to use a tee. What a shame.īy the way, it may seem like splitting hairs to say that this isn’t a field goal, but as you can see in the video the two are actually fairly different. Here’s CU Alum Mason Crosby trying one two years ago with the Packers from 69 yards, and coming just short. Since then, only one more fair-catch kick has been successful (by the 76 Chargers), although a number have been tried. In 1969 a fair-catch kick was actually the game-winning score in a game for the Chicago Bears, and a year later the Redskins just missed a similar kick that would have broken the tie. Of course, in this day and age it almost never happens that a team receives a fair catch in good enough field position that they would rather try a free kick than just run some plays, but it happens occasionally towards the end of a half, particularly if there simply isn’t time to run any other kind of play. It turns out that, after a punt or a kickoff that was fielded by fair catch, the team receiving the kick actually has two options: they can run a play from scrimmage (also known as “doing normal football things”) or they can attempt a type of free kick called a “ fair catch kick.” If the kick goes through the uprights, they score three points. Still, if you haven’t encountered this before it’s rather nifty. It’s the one that, if, say, you’re a grad student trying to compile a list of weird NFL rules and you start asking all your football-savvy friends for their input, will come up over and over again even though its one of the few things you already knew. I put this one at the bottom because it’s the one that the most people probably know about. A Team Can Score 3 Points Without Kicking A Field Goal Okay, now, on to the unlikely-but-possible scenarios, approximately in order of increasing awesomeness:ġ5. It will not help you as much as you think it will. If you’re an NFL ref reading this on your iPhone from the sideline of the big game, please stop. You know, so that you have something to keep an eye out for this coming Sunday if for some reason the half time show is lame and the commercials don’t live up to the hype.ĭisclaimer: I am not an authority on the rules of football, so this should not be considered authoritative. So instead of constitutional trivia, I offer you this list of totally ridiculous things that can happen in an American football game. Still, if there are two things I love in this world besides the Beatles, it’s loopholes and lists of trivia. And now that I’m back, I’m discovering that it’s much harder to come up with scenarios like these than I expected. At the time, I desperately wanted to blog about the list and maybe try to add to it, but was still on my self-imposed winter blogging break. A few weeks ago a blogger named Skip Oliva compiled a list of “ Eight Crazy Constitutional Scenarios,” in which he laid out a list of several surprisingly radical things that could happen in the United States without running afoul of our founding document (at least not technically).
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