NFL had the goal posts at the goal line until 1974. And yes they did get in the way of plays.
It used to be the rule. That’s why it’s called a touch down. If you crossed the goal line near the the sideline, you’d run to the center of the field to touch the ball down. Of course if you’re being tackled as you go over the line you can’t do this. I believe this is the rule in rugby.
Back in the day (1800s) if you scored a touchdown near the sidelines you could opt to punt it back out. Then the extra point was taken from where your teammate caught the ball. I think the defense was confined to the end zone until the kick was made so if you stationed your players about at the ten yard line, they pretty much cold catch the ball uncontested. In those early days, the touchdown earned only a point or two, the “extra” point, called a try in those days, was worth more.
Up through the early 1970s in the NFL and college, and this is still the rule in high school, a missed field goal was treated like a punt. You don’t get the ball back after a punt (unless the receiving team touches it and then the kicking team then gains possession somehow).
Still done that way in the CFL. Plus we have the one point rule if the kick goes wide of the posts but the fielding team can’t get the ball out of the end zone.
Why would anyone want kick a FG on anything but 4th down? The only reason to attempt the FG is that you failed in the other attempts to get the 1st or get in the endzone.
If you are in overtime, and at the point where a field goal is all you need to win, and you are deep in opposing territory (say, the opponent’s 7-yard line,) it can be worth your while to kick a field goal on first, second or third down (such that if you fumble the snap, you get another shot at it.)
Yup, though that’s an extension of what we had already talked about, regarding needing the points from a field goal at (or very close to) the end of the 4th quarter to tie or win the game.
And, thus, that’s the answer to Typo Negative as well: you’d only do it in a situation in which a successful field goal either (a) wins you the game outright (at the end of the 4th quarter, or in overtime), or (b) ties the game at the end of the 4th quarter, allowing you to go to overtime.
Also, there’s another case: if time is about to expire in the second quarter, and you’re in field goal range, but not close enough to the end zone to have a reasonable shot at a touchdown – at that point, what’s determining the down on which you attempt a field goal is the game clock, not the down itself.
And, such plays certainly do happen in the NFL, though I suspect that they probably don’t happen more than a handful of times each season.
This shit never ceases to amaze me.
Welcome to the SDMB. Do you have anything to actually add to this discussion?
Is a successful onside kick an exception to this rule? Also, isn’t it possible to have a fake field goal that’s actually an onside kick?
There are many ways to retain possession of the ball during a kick. But the ball has to become a live ball during the process. During a kickoff, that occurs when the ball travels 10 yards or touches a member of the receiving team. It’s similar to a fumble which can occur on any play, so it’s not really a special case. In addition, if the ball goes out of bounds during a kick possession automatically goes to the receiving team, so they have the “default” possession.
Unless I’m misunderstanding you, no. If you fake a field goal you are essentially just running a play from scrimmage in an attempt to gain the first down or score a touchdown. Once you kick the ball in a field goal attempt special rules are in effect. If a blocked ball remains behind the line of scrimmage it is treated like a fumble and either team can advance it. If a blocked ball travels past the line of scrimmage it can only be advanced by the receiving team. If a kick falls short or wide but in the field of play, the receiving team can advance the ball but if a member of the kicking team touches it first that’s a penalty for illegal touch. But there’s no way to kick the ball and retain possession without the receiving team touching it first.
Velocity gave the most common reasons, but there’s also the added bonus that if you attempt a kick on third down, and the snap is muffed, or the kick is blocked (and doesn’t go forward of the line of scrimmage) and you recover it, you have another attempt. On fourth down, both of these cases would result in a turnover on downs.
Why not have a sliding scale of points for (successful) field goals? 1 point for every 10 yards between the goal line and the positioning of the ball. The longest NFL FG was 64 yards, so on this scale it would have been worth 7 points.
An onside kick can only occur at a kickoff. It’s a remnant of kicking the ball forward in rugby but very constrained by rules, and hardly makes sense to me among the rest of the rules, but it creates very exciting football games because after scoring a team doesn’t really have to give the ball over as in other kicks that automatically change possession.
Imagine in that other sport called football, after scoring a goal, the scoring team got to inbound the ball and try to throw it to his own teammates as long as they had to run 10 [del]yards[del]meters before catching it.
The XFL was doing something like for extra point kicks. You could get 1,2, or 3 points based on the distance. The reason not to do it for field goals has been touched on above, the NFL doesn’t want it to be a kicking game, they want passing and running and to make field goals difficult. 7 points would be the highest scoring play in football allowing a come from behind win on a single play from further behind than ever before.
Field goals up to 40 yards are pretty much a gimmie these days, almost up to 50 yards. It would completely change the game for no apparent reason. Regular FGs make for boring TV, and increasing their value is rewarding failure to score a TD. You might also get the perverse situation where rather than going for a first down teams would purposely lose yardage to get more points on a subsequent FG.