The safety in last night’s Orange Bowl had me talking to a friend about safetys and free kicks.
I went to NFL rules page and got some info. Are there differences in NCAA rules?
Can you place kick a free kick after saftey?
Apparently in the NFL you can, you just can’t kick from a tee:
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2. On a safety kick, the team scored upon puts ball in play by a punt, dropkick, or placekick without tee. No score can be made on a free kick following a safety, even if a series of penalties places team in position. (A field goal can be scored only on a play from scrimmage or a free kick after a fair catch.)
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Can the receiving team score by running back a free kick after a safety?
According to the above, the answer is no.
Can the kicking team recover a free kick after safety?
Evidently so:
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15. Live Ball: A ball legally free kicked or snapped. It continues in play until the down ends.
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Now read these
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Try
After a touchdown, the scoring team is allowed a try during one scrimmage down. The ball may be spotted anywhere between the inbounds lines, two or more yards from the goal line. The successful conversion counts one point by kick; two points for a successful conversion by touchdown; or one point for a safety.
The defensive team never can score on a try. As soon as defense gets possession or the kick is blocked or a touchdown is not scored, the try is over.
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How can the "Try"ing team, the one that just scored a
touchdown, score a safety on the try?
In college football, you can take a free kick off of a tee.
A free kick is almost the same as a kickoff. The opposing team can run it back for a score and the kicking team can recover the ball after it has travelled 10 yards.
As for the 1-point defensive safety, it doesn’t crop up too much. In the NFL, you can pretty much only get it this way. On a 2-point try, team A tries to run the ball in, but fumbles on the 1. The fumbling player tries to pick it up, but the defense intentionally bats the ball back out of the end zone. This is a penalty, which if it happened during regular play, would be a 2-point safety. Since it is on an extra point, it is only a 1-point safety.
In college football, since the extra point attempts can be returned by the defense for a score, there are more ways for a safety to be recorded. The defense could intercept a pass in the field of play and then run back into the end zone and be tackled. If so, this would be a 1-point safety.
No, that just means that the kicking team can’t score with the free kick. If you placekick the ball through the goalposts, that’s not a field goal any more than if you do it on a normal kickoff (and Sebastian Janikowski, for instance, has done it a few times). Seems fair to me. That rule also doesn’t prevent the kicking team from scoring if they gain possession after the receiving team touches the ball; they just can’t do it with the kick itself.
A free kick is live just like a kickoff. Once it travels 10 yards, anybody can pick it up and run with it and score. It doesn’t have to touch the receiving team if it travels 10 yards.
However, if you send your free kick through the goal posts all you get out of it is a touchback.
“Free kick” is a generic term referring to both kickoffs and kicks after safeties.
Punts and field goals fall under the umbrella of “scrimmage kicks”.
In the latter, the ball is not live beyond the line of scrimmage until the receiving team touches it.