I was wondering about this the other day. It’s the end of the game (or the half), and the team with the ball wants to just take a knee and let the clock run out. It’s a common play; we see it all the time. Even the defense is usually pretty casual about it.
Has a team ever screwed it up? I can envision a couple of ways it could happen:
[ul]
[li] The snap is fumbled.[/li][li] The knee-taking team somehow fails to realize that it’s fourth down. Clock stops, ball changes hands.[/li][li] The QB’s knee doesn’t quite touch the ground. He either doesn’t realize this, or thinks the ref didn’t notice. The ref does notice, though, and the play isn’t blown dead. The QB, thinking the play is dead, tosses the ball to the ref, who gets out of the way and lets it go. Live ball (assuming it wasn’t going forward) for whoever picks it up.[/li][/ul]
I’ve never seen any of these happen, but there have been a lot of games in the NFL, and a lot of weird things have happened. Anyone know of something like this?
There’s a very famous example of this between the Eagles and the Giants I believe, where they fumble the snap and Herm Edwards (for the Eagles) picks it up and returns it for a game winning touchdown. I forget the name of the play, though, something like “The Fumble.” Anyhow, after that play, you’ll notice every team keeps a single player about 5-10 yards behind the QB in case that ever happens.
Edit: After a quick Google search, I found that this play wasn’t actually a kneel down, but an attempted hand off. Oops!
Yeah, they had taken a knee on the previous play but, according to Wikipedia, “the kneel-down play wasn’t universally accepted as an honorable way to win a game at the time,” so they ran one more play. Dumb call, which got the offensive coordinator fired. Here’s video (no sound).
I have seen fumbled snaps and kneeling on 4th down in high school games. Snaps are rarely but occasionally fumbled in college and pro games but I can’t think of a specific instance where they’ve been lost. College and pro teams are usually smart enough not to kneel out fourth down, but spiking the ball to stop the clock in a hurried, come-from-behind effort on fourth down does happen on occasion.
Your third scenario cannot happen, as simulating taking a knee is the same as taking a knee.
I call bullshit on Wikipedia’s assertion that “the kneel-down play wasn’t universally accepted as an honorable way to win a game at the time”. Quarterback flops have been the preferred way to kill the clock at least since I began watching football in the late 1960’s, and probably since long before.
The slight truth behind Wikipedia’s assertion is that kneeldowns weren’t usually called kneeldowns in 1978, and they were often executed a little bit differently. The QB would take a step back and flop on top of the ball, rather than kneeling quickly and handing it to the ref. It was usually called “falling on the ball”. New York called a hand-off in 1978 because they made a mistake. There was no other reason.
As for the OP, I know of no documented case in the history of football, at any level, where a team has called a kneel-down and failed to execute it correctly.
Well, then jackelope deserves credit for reminding you on probably one of the happiest days ever for a Giants fan. Today, you can probably laugh all day at that Piscarcik play, without having to wince.
No Giant fan from that period will ever forget that play. When I describe that play to football fans born in later years, I always get something like “Csonka never played for the Giants, that’s impossible”.
Despite how upstanding a coach Herm Edwards appears, I will always, always hate the man. Wrong place, wrong time.
Excellent point, you will note, I refrained from actual cursing and I can tell you that I barely ground my teeth at all.
I actually thought the Jets were being evil and sadistic when they hired him. What a foul thing to do to the Giants fans, letting that man coach in Giant Stadium.