A drop kick hits the ground before it is kicked. A punt is kicked while the ball is in the air.
As an aside, the Arena Football League did, or perhaps still does, award 4 points for a drop kicked field goal, and 2 for a drop kicked extra point. Because of this, it’s not uncommon to see a drop kick in an AFL game.
Sofa
It says that a shoe may not be modified, but it doesn’t say how it must be manufactured.
FWIW, we had a drop kick-hijacked thread about a year ago.
From one NFL film report I saw, the last attempted real-game drop kick was, I believe in the 1940’s.
Apparently Jim McMann (sp?), the one-time Eagles QB (who IIRC, had some kicking experience in HS or college) decided he wanted to learn to drop kick in the NFL.
He soon learned that the advice from the “watermellon ball” days – bounce the ball a few inches to the side of the tip – would not work with a modern, pointy ball. After considerable trial and error he got consistant bounces by dropping the ball right on its tip.
He claims to have become quite an expert drop kicker on the practice field. He begged his coaches to let him try it in a real game. They always humored him but never gave him the green light to try it in the field.
When you could dropkick beyond the line of scrimmage, it was more of a weapon.
You could try a last ditch pass to move the ball up the field and try a dropkick field goal to win the game.
I would think such a play, even though it is legal, would be very hard to pull off in today’s game.
By Jason Elam of the Denver Broncos.
I remember an article in Sports Ill. several years ago…an NFL QB (probably Doug Flutie) had a brilliant end-of-game scenario: if you’re down by 3 points or less, way out of field goal range, and time for only 1 play: the defense is expecting a Hail Mary to the end zone–but you dump it just far enough to a wide open receiver in field goal range, who then drop kicks it for the game winning field goal.
But if the No Fun League has outlawed drop kicks beyond the line of scrimmage, this wouldn’t work. Darn.