The kicking team can catch a high kickoff, but only if the receiving team is not in position to catch it.
A.R. 6.9 A kickoff after a Try is caught in the air by a kicking team player on the kicking team’s 41-yard line:
(a) before any touching by the receiving team. A receiving team player could have
caught the ball.
Ruling: Interference with the opportunity to make a catch. 15-yard penalty from spot
of foul, snap only (10-1-4).
NCAA football has a similar rule.
If the ball has hit the ground, it’s fair game for anyone. This is one reason that onside kicks are kicked straight down to bounce high, rather than just kicked high and short.
The rationale I was taught that kicks are not advance-able by the kicking team is that stopping the play at the point of recovery then allows it to be sorted out whether the touching was legal or not or whether previously illegal touching occurred. Muffs don’t change the status of the ball from kicks to something else because you need possession to change the status (eg, a passed ball must be caught before it stops being a pass (unless it’s incomplete, but then the play is over so it doesn’t matter)).
Jacksonville is +13 tomorrow, a higher spread than I expected. I’m thinking about betting it.
The home team in the divisional round is a very strong favorite, historically, both because they’re good enough to have locked up a top 2 seed in the first place, and because they’ve had a week to rest.
But Jacksonville, strangely enough, has been playing better as a cold weather team than New England has. I think NE wins, but I doubt it’s by a margin larger than 13. Anyone have any opinions on the bet?
Looking at the game in a vacuum, I agree with you - I don’t see the Pats covering a 13 point spread against the Jags in January. If I were forced to pick the game, and take the Jags and the points.
That being said, the last thing I’m going to do at any point this season is put money against New England.
The only concern I would have is that toward the end of the game last week the Steelers lit up the Jacksonville defense. New England’s offense is on another level, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see them hang a nickel on the Jags.
Green Bay looked real good. I am slightly shocked that they recovered from such an ugly start .
If the Giants beat Dallas they play in G.B.again. Weather could be uglier yet.
Well, darn. I’m not a huge football fan, but I wanted to see the Seattle-Green Bay game. Forgot it was on. Checked the listings earlier today and didn’t seen anything but the Jaguar-Patriots. And it looked like it was snowing in Green Bay. I like watching snow games.
I’m becoming more and more irritated by the commentators’ inability to distinguish between an end around, reverse, and double reverse.
Last week, I forget which game, but a team ran an end around. The announcer said “They run an end around… a reverse…” - at first, after he said “end around”, I thought “HEY! THEY GOT IT RIGHT!” and then he said “…reverse” after, as if he were clarifying or they were the same thing. :smack:
Okay. So a few minutes ago in the Patriots/Jaguars game, there was a reverse. I thought to myself “here’s your chance to correctly call a reverse, just don’t call it a double reverse” and Jim Nantz calls it “an end around to Welker”.
It was snowing so hard at one point they couldn’t use the normal, default, press box-level camera for an entire Packer’s possession. The only cameras used were the over-the field camera and the camera on the truck behind the sideline. It was odd to watch an entire possession from that angle.
I like when they use other cameras. The pressbox camera is way overused and doesn’t give a very good view of the field. Ever since they developed high quality sky camera rigs those should’ve become the default camera view - it’s so much better watching the play unfold from behind and above the quarterback. You see almost everything.
I know the feeling. That is why I will be going to the bar for the Giants-Cowboys game later. I am just hoping that Eli can keep up his mini-streak of playing very well behind center.
Woot! go Giants! (I’m a Packer Fan). Sure the Giants are a much better team than in week 2, but so are the Packers. Much better chance to win against the Giants at Lambeau than vs Dallas in Texas.
I’m disappointed that the Cowboys laid an egg today. That means we’ll probably have to endure the Packers in the Superbowl. Let the Favre cocksucking begin. America’s only speck hope for a Favre-free Superbowl rests on the fact that Favre is a world class choke artist who has a great chance of pissing down his leg against the Giants.
Even if he makes, there is still the comfort of knowing the Packers wil get raped and sodomized by the patriots. The game will be over after the 1st quarter.
I dunno, Dio, this might be the year you want to root for the Pack. Surely Favre couldn’t resist going out in a blaze of glory, you’d be rid of him forever.
Stupid Cowboys, why can’t you guys knock it off with all these penalties?
