I cannot picture this. Can someone explain what is a “safety”, and perhaps give me a scenario when this has a high likelihood of occuring?
‘Safety’ has two meanings in American football. It’s the name of a defensive position - the player who lines up furthest back, whose job it is to prevent tackle the running back should he make it past everyone else, or assist in defending a deep pass. It’s also the name of a score worth two points which occurs when the defense tackles the offensive player with the ball in his own end zone. This will happen, for example, if the offense is backed up on their own 1 yard line and the QB is sacked.
Simply, when the offense is tackled in the end-zone that they are defending.
Most common scenario. Offense has the ball on their own 1 yard line. Quarterback wants to make a forward the ball, defense penetrates the line of scrimmage into the offensive back field and sacks the quarterback before he can pass the ball.
That must be such a rare occurence. I guess the best chance is at the start of a quarter? But, can the offense really be pushed back into their end zone? Obviously, it happens, but…
Also a penalty in the end zone such as holding is a safety. And if a punt is blocked and goes out of the end zone that is also a safety.
It can happen any time the offense has the ball near their own end zone.
Yes , you are right, it doesn’t happen frequently. Probably averages one a weekend in the NFL. (16 games). It is worth two points on the scoreboard, which may not sound like a lot but the team who gets the safety also gets possession of the football.
Rarely happens at the beginning of a quarter. nothing to do with it. It usually happens after a change of possession either by a turnover or punt that is downed near the endzone.
The best chance is when a punt pins a team back very close to the goal line.
Presumably you’ve seen punts where the kicking team has downed the ball inside the 5-yard line, right? That is prime safety territory. If the quarterback is sacked in the end zone on a pass play, if the running back is tackled behind the line of scrimmage in the end zone, if the punter steps out of bounds punting from the end zone…ultimately any play that results in the team with possession of the ball being downed in their own end zone. Holding in the end zone can also result in a safety (it happened in the Super Bowl last year). I believe intentional grounding does as well.
Remember that whenever there is a punt the punting team is trying to pin the opposing team down close to that team’s end zone. That is why you’ll see a punter jump up & down with excitement when he’s able to place his punt inside his opponent’s 5-yard line (with no punt return). That’s how an offense might get into that uncomfortable position of having to start close to their own end zone. From there - let’s say the offense is at its own 3-yard line - it’s not unlikely at all for an offensive player to find himself >3 yards back, i.e. in his own end zone. After all, the ball has to go backwards before it goes forwards on every play from scrimmage. Also it’s quite tempting for a quarterback to drop back in order to attempt a pass in that spot since there is a huge amount of grass in front of the offense that the defense has to defend somehow & the rewards of slipping a pass over a bunched-up defense are great… and touchdown passes of 95+ yards do happen.
There were 14 safeties during the entire 2009 regular season. Twenty one safeties in 2008. Eighteen in in 2007.
My estimate of 1 per weekend in the NFL is pretty close.
here is good video of a running back stopped for a safety.(there is a short stupid ad. but The NFL enforces their video rights very tenaciously and it’s hard to find video that isn’t through the NFL)
Sometimes an offense will intentionally take a safety by walking the ball out the back of their own end zone. Typically it happens when the offense is ahead in the score late in the game. The advantage is that following the safety the offensive team gets to kick to the defensive team in unhurried fashion from the offense’s 20-yard line, which is preferable to punting under pressure from close to one’s own goal line. So it’s a question of field position, in other words.
College used to have an obscure rule for a 1 point safety. They got rid of that 20 or more years ago. It could only happen on a 2 point play but I don’t recall all the details.
I think college still has the one point safety. It theoretically happens on an extra point try going the other way, which is 98 yards away from the endzone it has to happen in. So either you need about 7 post touchdown personal fouls, or a blocked kick that that turns into the keystone cops and goes backward 98 yards before anyone recovers.
The theory as explained to me is so that if the ball is knocked all they way back to the kicking endzone, there is still a benefit to the offensive team recovering it(1 point safety) opposed to letting the D recover it(2 point conversion touchdown).
Also, holding in the endzone, or illegal pass is called a safety too.
In college the defense can score 2 on a 2 point play if they intercept a pass or get a fumble and run it back all the way. That rule has been around 10-15 years.
That’s not quite right. Here’sa description of a play where it happened in 2004.
Essentially what happened is that a PAT was missed but didn’t go out of the endzone. The defence recovered the ball, tried to run it out but was tackled in the end zone. Kicking team gets one point.
In the CFL, where the uprights are on the goal line, teams backed up into their end zone will often concede the safety rather than punt. Even if the team gets a good punt the opposition will probably only have to go 10 yards or so to get a field goal, so the trade-off is usually worth it.
The CFL also has the “rouge”, 1 point on what would be a touchback in the States (gotta get it out of the end zone IOW). Then you’ve got the whole “impetus” thing which differentiates between a safety and a touchback/rouge in the first place.
the rouge doesn’t line up 100% with touchbacks. On a kickoff, you can’t kick the ball through the endzone for a rouge - it has to stop within the bounds of the field.
NFL had the goalposts on the goal line up until around 1970. That created a lot of problems for the offense since you had to always worry the goal posts would get in the way.