I’m going to see if I can word the question in my head well enough for it to be understood:
In the NFL, what is the longest x amount of yards and goal that has ended up as a touchdown? Does the NFL have a record for that?
(sorry, misread the post)
Vikings rookie Cordarrelle Patterson took the opening kickoff against Green Bay and returned 109-yards for a touchdown. I actually saw Devon Hester returning a short field goal 108 yards for a touchdown. Brett Favre once threw a 99 yard touchdown pass against the Bears. Tony dorsett once ran for a 99 yard touchdown against the Vikings.
If I’m parsing the question correctly, the OP is asking “what’s the longest play NFL play that started as a ‘x and goal’ play (e.g., 1st and goal, 2nd and goal, etc.),” which ended as a touchdown? Obviously, it’d have to have been set up by one or more long losses of yardage (from penalties, sacks, etc.), since the offense would have had to have gotten a first down within the 10 yard line during the drive.
Does the NFL keep track of such things? I would not be surprised. Is there an easy way to look it up? That, I do not know (nor do I know the answer to the question).
While we wait for a right answer (man, it’s HARD to google this one!), I did find this fun anomaly - 3rd and Goal from the 7 (the wrong 7):
So StatHead powers these sort of stats. Unfortunately, it requires a subscription to see the complete results. If you run a search for it, it hides the first 10 results. Looks like the 11th longest “and goal” to result in a TD is a tie between Ben Roethlisberger to Antonio Brown for 22 yards against the Browns on 9/9/18, and Ryan Fitzpatrick to DeVante Parker for 22 yards against the 49ers on 10/11/20.
(Edit: that may not actually be the 11th longest such TD - I did include safeties in the query, because I thought it would be fun to see the results. Nothing came up in results 11-20.)
Yes but none of those were goal situations. They were not 1st-and-goal, 2nd-and-goal touchdowns.
I’m not giving up! I submitted a request to an NFL record site with that question.
Great find. Although a couple of the defense’s attempts to recover the ball looked suspiciously like booting /swatting it further downfield rather than actually attempting to grab it. Not sure that’s quit Kosher.
ANyhow, that play resulted in 3rd and 93. For NCAA, not NFL. And for the attempt at a touchdown. Which I assume they did not make or else that’d be included in the same clip.
But “3rd and 93” ought to be real close to the record bad “down and yards to gain” in its own right.
I’m sure we’ve all had life experiences that paralleled that pretty closely.
I got this info:
https://stathead.com/tiny/AUgng - We have play-by-play data back to 1994, and in that span it appears the longest goal-to-go touchdown was a 28-yard pass by Aaron Brooks to Willie Jackson in 2001. You can see other long goal-to-go scores in this Game Play Finder search if you scroll down to the Plays table.
St. Louis Rams at New Orleans Saints - December 17th, 2001 | Pro-Football-Reference.com - this is the game in question, it appears the Saints racked up 4 penalties in a row to get pushed all the way back to 2nd and 37 before setting up that TD on 3rd down.
Here’s the video, with the sequence starting at 13:58. From 1st and goal at the 4, they lose 1 yard on a run, then delay of game, false start, holding, personal foul.
Sidebar: why was it still 2nd down after the personal foul? It looked like it was after the 2nd down play was completed, and I thought that penalty was loss of down anyway.
Yeah, that’s weird, especially as the referee indicates that it’s enforced from the “dead ball spot” (i.e., where the prior play had ended), since the penalty occurred after the play had ended…but he also says, “still 2nd down.” I’m wondering if there’s something further that got edited out of that video, about the down enforcement.
IANA enough of a rules expert to know, but might the details of that penalty have been different in 2001? Gosh knows the NFL likes to tinker with the rules.
It’s possible, but “after the play” penalties like that have, to the best of my knowledge, not ever wiped out the result of the prior play (yardage, down), and in this case, the penalty was enforced from the spot where the previous play ended. Barring someone providing a better explanation, it seems to me that the officials messed up the downs on that – maybe it was the fact that the past three penalties all left it at 2nd down.
It’s possible to have a dead ball foul before the snap, but it gets credited to the prior play. If someone threw a punch after the line judge has reset the ball for the next play, but before the snap, for example.
True, but it’s not the case on this play. At 15:13, you can see #63 throw a punch and knock the guy over, after the 2nd down play was whistled dead. I don’t see a logical explanation other than an error by the officials.
Wow, that’s a flat-out goof. Imagine that, the answer to this question turns out to be a play that shouldn’t have happened. (Presumably they would have kicked a field goal if it was fourth down like it should have been.)
The referee did not indicate that it was a dead ball fall, so the officials must have determined that it took place during the play, which is why it would still be second down. A penalty against the offense on a running play (or after a pass completion) where the foul takes place in front of where the play ends is measured from the “dead ball spot.”
The Bills have a 1st and Goal from the 30 yard line right now. Perhaps we’ll see a new record?