Sounds odd to punt on 4th and goal but when it’s 4th and 93 , you punt. 
Hilarious.
Let’s go to the quarry and throw stuff down there! I love the announcers! “It’s still rolling!”
Classic example of why football players should fall on the ball, rather than trying to pick it up in stride. <sigh>
I was at a game and a team converted on 4th and around 40 in the last few seconds. Which allowed them to kick a FG to win 9-7. The kick hit the upright, crossbar and went over.
On the 3rd down a guy dropped a pass in the middle of the field. Had he caught it , most likely the clock would have run out and they would have lost 7-6. A dropped pass basically won the game for them.
The video doesn’t show the next play. Are we to assume that they didn’t convert on third-and-93?
I’m not sure that’s entirely true. The first Mississippi St. player to have a chance at it was at about their own 35 yard line, and if he’d just fallen on the ball and curled up he would have been touched down there. As it happened, after a punt from Louisiana Tech’s own 7, they probably had better field position.
I’ve always wondered about pass plays on fourth down. If the pass is incomplete, the defense takes possession at the original line of scrimmage. Are defensive backs told, or do they tell themselves, to bat the ball down even if they have a chance at an interception? It would often give the team better position, but it also would go against years of coaching to go for an interception when you can, and doesn’t look as good in their stats.
yes in a lot of cases they do bat the ball down on 4th down. But if it’s an easy catch they normally catch it because as you mention, an interception looks good for their stats. The defenders can get bonuses based not only on tackles but also fumbles caused/recovered and ints.
Have you ever heard anyone in the know comment on such a situation? I don’t doubt that there could be contract incentives for such things, but I’ve never heard a player admit that he intentionally hurt a team’s position in order to fulfill one.
Don’t think a player will admit that kind of thing - padding stats.
Defense batting down a pass is very common if it’s the last play of the game ( or last play of 1st half ) if the ball is thrown into the endzone for a hail mary play. They don’t want to risk deflecting the ball to the other team.
They gained a robust 21 yards on a running play, leaving a way more manageable fourth-and-72 . . . but alas, still decided to punt.
Why would they even try a running play in that situation, though? Even if they get what would ordinarily be a pretty good result from it (like, say, 21 yards), they’re still going to need to punt on the next play, and I can’t imagine that a punt from the 28 is much better than a punt from the 7. Why not toss a Hail Mary, which at least has a chance to do something constructive?
Oh damn, that the longest I’ve seen the ball on the ground during live play outside of Blood Bowl.
Question: When exactly is advancing a loose ball illegal? I think that a couple of the Mississippi State swats, particularly the last one which propelled it very quickly from the 37 to where it was finally recovered, could’ve been flagged.
Yeah, it looked like Miss St. was intentionally pushing the ball down the field, which can be flagged.
The run was to give the punter enough room to evade a tackle or recover a fumble or bad snap on the *next *down. A pass would have had more chance of being intercepted for a TD than of scoring or getting the team in position to score.
I have seen a missed snap tumble 40+ yards into the end zone, for a safety. But then, that was in high school ball. You expect a little more from college.
And all other things being equal, the other team will have to go an extra 21 yards to score. A punt from the 7 would be caught at about the 50. The same punt from the 28 would be caught at the other team’s 29.
I hadn’t realized that punts were particularly limited by how far the kicker could kick, though. Wouldn’t the kicker be sending it further than usual, from far back-field?
With the ball on the 7 the punter will be kicking from in his own end zone. There’s a great danger of a safety or a blocked punt resulting in a turn-over and touch down in that situation so the punter has to get the kick off fast and usually will get less yardage from it. He also can’t take the risk of trying to direct the ball, he has to kick it down the center of the field to get the maximum distance and that leaves the receivers more running room so the return take away more yards from the effective distance.
Punts are totally limited by how far the punter can kick the ball. The average punt travels about 50 yards from the spot of the kick, or 40 yards beyond the line of scrimmage.
Most punters could physically kick the ball somewhat farther than that, but they are further limited by the need to maintain a high trajectory. Low line drive kicks tend to result in long returns, more than negating the extra distance of the kick.
But advancing a loose ball is less advantageous that securing it. An American football isn’t something you can effectively dribble like a soccer/football. That weird shape is going to make it move/bounce unpredictably. If it goes sideways and out of bounds before you can secure it then it remains the offense’s ball. And you also risk the offense catching up and securing it (which is ultimately what happened in this case).
I don’t know how often you get penalized for doing something that hurts your team. That’s kind of like penalizing a player for running the wrong direction. No penalty is needed, that team is already suffering because the player is a bonehead.