My stupid football question of the week.
The Bills had the lead late in the game and they were punting the ball. They wanted to make sure the Bengals couldn’t return the kick so they were punting it into the endzone.
The punter got it easily into the endzone. But suppose he had really gotten his foot under it and kicked the ball through the uprights. Would that have counted as a field goal? Or is a punt inherently different that a field goal attempt and something you can’t score off of?
As soon as the ball crosses the plane at the front of the endzone, it’s a dead ball and a touchback.
there is the drop kick (from wiki)
You can’t punt the ball for a field goal or point after touchdown. But you can drop kick it…the kicker drops the ball and kicks it when it bounces up.
It has been used in the NFL once in the last 60plus years. Doug Flutie did so for a PAT playing for New England against Miami on January 1, 2006.
The advantage of doing a drop kick is you have one more man (the holder) available for blocking. The disadvantage is the shape of the ball…very easy to get a bad bounce. Since special teams are far better at blocking then kickers are getting true bounce, it is seldom used.
Jinx, I usually get the worse of the simul-posts. Consider this my touchdown dance.
Similarly in both codes of rugby a drop-kick at goal may be made from open play or any time a place-kick is allowed. It is the usual mode of kicking a conversion (cf. extra point after touchdown) in the seven-a-side game as it takes less time to execute than a place kick, but in yesterday’s match against Samoa the England fly-half Toby Flood drop-kicked a conversion, which is very unusual in 15-a-side. A punt at goal is right out, though - it would be far too easy.
Dropkicks are alive and well in both forms of rugby (although only worth 1 point in rugby league).
Here’s Francois Steyn taking a 55 metre drop-goal in the French rugby competition.
Dropkicking is not that hard to do. I used to screw around with it and could get pretty good distance. Probably in the 20 yard range. That is trying to kick with some degree of accuracy.
Right. In order to be a legal kick for a field goal (or extra point), the ball has to be kicked from the ground, either from a placement on the ground (i.e., a standard placekick) or from a bounce off of the ground (i.e., a dropkick). Since a punt never hits the ground before the punter punts it, even if it goes through the uprights, it’s still just a touchback.
I suspect that the demise of the drop-kick were the very changes to the ball shape that made forward passes more possible- from more of a rugby-ball shape to something more pointy.
Yep. Modern rugby ball versus modern NFL football.
Do you mean the back of the endzone?
In practice, nobody returns punts from the endzone, because they’re really unlikely to get better yardage than a touchback, but don’t they have the option in theory?
At first I thought that was amazing, but now I’m wondering if the ball ever hit the ground. Can’t tell from the video.
No, that’s kickoffs. Punts that cross the line are automatic touchbacks.
If you attempt to drop kick a field goal, and it fails, does the ball go back to the placement of the drop kick, the line of scrimmage, or is it considered a punt?
Corollary: If a punter misses the ball as he drops it to his foot, and then it bounces up and then he kicks it, is it considered a punt or a drop kick, and where is the ball placed? And is the punt returner allowed to attempt a return in such a scenario?
Nope. It has to touch the ground in the endzone. If it’s in the air, a player can leap across the goalline, and bat it back into play before it hits the ground.
What am I missing here? Frequently on a punt the kicking team will try and pin the ball as close to the endzone as they can and sometimes that involves jumping from the playing field across the endzone plane to swat back a ball before it lands in the endzone. As long as the player’s last step was on the field side of the line and the ball hasn’t hit the ground yet, it is legal to deflect it back into play. Right?
The ball would return to the spot of the drop-kick, unless (as with all missed field goals) the defense attempts to return it.
Bit of a judgment call there, but if a player intends to punt, and fumbles the snap or whiffs on the drop, he has lost control of the ball, and from that point he would be kicking a loose ball, which is a penalty. The ball is still live, and the defense can return the kick, but afterward they have the option of accepting a 10-yard penalty which would force a re-kick.
I’ve seen a punter fumble the snap and kick the ball off of the ground, resulting in a penalty as per above. I’ve seen a near-whiff on the drop by Sean Landeta in the 1985 playoffs. (But the ball did graze off the side of his foot.) I’ve never seen a pure whiff followed by a kick on the bounce.
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I’ve never seen a penalty on plays like that. If it hasn’t crossed the line of scrimmage, it’s still eligible to kick.