NO! As long as the other team moved the ball into the end zone (or, as mentioned, your natural momentum carried you in as you made a catch), there can’t be a safety. It has nothing to do with whether you’re trying to run the ball out or not.
The only way to get a safety after making an interception in the end zone is to run out of the end zone, then run backwards into it again and get tackled there.
Good point, because of forward progress.
Please tell me that someone will create a Philly Special Cheesesteak.
Just for closure and clarity: Am I correct that technically there are five choices — Receive, Defer, Kick-off, Defend North, Defend South — but that any of the three choices other than Receive and Defer will, in practice, mean the other team gets to receive the first kickoff in both halves?
Pretty much, yes.
It was the one where Seattle was at the 2 with about 15 seconds left, ran a pass play and got picked in the endzone, but the defender ran the ball out, to about the one. Which was a problem for New England, because they could not just end the game on a kneel, as that would be a safety. But, of course, Seattle got offside on the next play and that saved them from the safety.
Would that have been the hail mary AJ Green caught against the Browns?
Ah, right: the Malcolm Butler interception. I had forgotten the details of what happened afterward. But I would cut him a little slack there. In slow motion, it’s pretty clear that had he gone to a knee in the end zone, he would have been fine. But in the heat of the moment, he might have thought that he caught it in the field of play, then took some steps on his own into the end zone and thus was vulnerable to a safety if he didn’t get back out.
Atamasama seems to have misunderstood what we were talking about, although I agree that it was a good special teams play by the Eagles’ kickoff coverage unit, starting with using a “mortar kick” short of the end zone. Anecdotally, having not crunched (or seen) the numbers (although I do watch upwards of 100 NFL games per season), it strikes me that the recently added rule making kickoff touchbacks go out to the 25 has not worked the way the Competition Committee had hoped. They wanted to reduce the number of returns, which tend to create a lot of dangerous collisions. But what I see is more of those mortar kicks, plus a lot of players continuing to try to make a big play happen by running it out of the end zone even though they hardly ever seem to get back to the 25.
I did. :o
Apparently it was Nick Foles, not his coach, who called for the “Philly Philly” trick play.
So … there are microphones everywhere; and talk in huddles, etc. is available after the game?
BTW, at the page linked above, once I click on it, the short video clip plays over and over; I don’t know how to stop it (though I can mute it or change the speed). What am I doing wrong?
Great story. I’m sure Foles had Brady’s failed catch (with his alligator arms) in mind when he suggested it. And Pederson did too.
Reminds me of the first Rams TD pass ever thrown in a Super Bowl (either the LA Rams or the St. Louis Rams). It wasn’t thrown by Kurt Warner,… or Vince Ferragamo… It was thrown in Super Bowl XIV by halfback Lawrence McCutcheon on an option play. Hey it was an RPO play.
Whatever you’re doing wrong, I am too. It just runs and runs and runs.
Butler’s momentum was also naturally carrying him out of the end zone as well. It would have been almost impossible for him to intercept the ball, secure it, and also simultaneously knee himself down into the end zone without having emerged from the end zone, all in one split second.