Been doing some math out of idle football curiosity:
The longest scoring drive, of course, would be 99 yards; it couldn’t be longer than that.
Suppose that each time, the offense had to convert a fourth down to keep the drive going, and also chose to go for it from 4th and goal. All plays end inbounds (no ballcarrier goes out of bounds to stop the clock.) No team calls timeout. No penalties/flags. Quarterback always snaps the ball when the play clock is at one second to spare (Wikipedia: " In the NFL, teams have 40 seconds timed from the end of the previous down."). Each play lasts exactly five seconds (this is arbitrary, but is done to rule out some scenario whereby a ballcarrier is dancing around meaninglessly to burn more time off the clock.)
My math is: The longest possible such drive would be 40 plays, 99 yards, and 26 minutes…does that sound right? (give or take a few seconds).
If penalty time runoffs were included, could that plausibly stretch it to an entire half of a football game?
It’s actually possible for drives to last forever. There are penalties on the defense that give 5 yards and a first down. Throw in the offense losing yards constantly, whether to penalties or just being bad, and it can go on the entire half.
No penalties is specified. Even if a play went backwards, they would always have to make 10 yards from the original first down marker. So, if you did the math right, the time should be right.
Is 99 the most that can be recorded? Because the drive could start closer to the goal line than the 1.
True, but from the standpoint of statistical record-keeping, the NFL only records the results of plays (and the placement of the ball) in whole yards. Thus, even though a ball can be spotted on the “one inch line” (that is, just shy of the goal line), when you look at the actual statistical record of that play, it’ll record the play as having started on the 1.
I won’t swear to its veracity, but according to this chart,the longest drive time wise was a 13 minute, 27 second drive by the Tennessee Oilers against the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving in 1997.
According to this site , the longest college drive took 14 minutes, 26 seconds as Navy bored New Mexico into submission in the 2004 Emerald Bowl.
No penalties in such a long drive is not realistic. Might as well include penalties, and with that one drive could last an entire half, and longer since the half can’t end end on a defensive penalty.
So it looks like my math was wrong, I forgot to take into account the game play of the plays themselves. With 40 plays of five seconds apiece, that would be over three minutes. So such a 40-play drive could conceivably last longer than 29 minutes of game time.
This raises a question about penalties, for me at least. How often do you see a case where the offence is penalised and then subsequently the defence is penalised, conceding a first down, so that the offence get a first down further from the goal line than their previous first down? And wouldn’t such an event mean that the yardage of the drive was longer than the length of the field?
The OP disallowed penalties in his scenario, but that’s been pretty well covered already. So there’s no reason we can’t expand the discussion to include penalties.
Your situation of backwards progress can also happen without an offensive penalty:
Setup: It's first down with the line of scrimmage at offense's 40 yard line = YL so midfield is the first down target.
First play: Offense intends a pass play, but QB is sacked deep in the backfield for a 20 yard loss. It’s now 2nd and 30 with the ball on the offense’s 20 YL.
Second Play: Defense commits a penalty punished by 5 yards and automatic first down.
Result: Line of scrimmage is now offense’s 25 and first down target is at the offense’s 35. We’re in the same down-and-yards-to-go situation as before the two plays, but 15 yards farther from the defense’s goal line. And between 15 and 60 seconds later on the clock depending on how much offensive dawdling occurred between plays.
If this occurs repeatedly enough the offense can seesaw ahead and back for an entire half. In the extreme they might never even leave their half of the field and remain out of field goal range as the half comes to a close!
Here’s a decent list of penalties:
Assuming it’s accurate, defensive holding is the only 5 yards + automatic first down. There are several more 15 yards and automatic first down, but they will only represent backwards progress after the Offense has been thrown for an even larger loss (or penalty) on the previous play(s).
How likely is any of this? Not very. IANA enough of a football statistician to hazard a guess.
Let’s look at the outer bounds of the scenario. A half of football is 30 minutes, and possession isn’t maintained past the end of a half, so the absolute outer bound of time of possession on a drive is 30 minutes.
But I don’t think there’s any way to start a possession with no time elapsed. A half of football begins with a kickoff. Even a kickoff out of the end zone takes about 5 seconds. Since you want to start on the offense’s 1 yard line, the opening kickoff would have to be actually be returned, with some oddball scenario that results in the receiving team taking over at their own 1 yard line. That’s going to take some amount of time off the clock. At the absolute outer bound, you’re probably looking at about 29:45 or so being available for a drive that starts at the 1.
In calculating the time of the drive, don’t forget that the game clock and play clock both stop and reset at the end of a quarter, and the play clock stops and resets at the two minute warning.
On a kickoff in the NFL, the game clock doesn’t start when the ball is kicked – it starts when it is fielded (or at least touched) by someone. So, a kickoff that goes out of the end zone takes no time off the clock.
Of course, a kickoff out of the end zone puts the ball on the 25.
To put the ball inside the 1-yard line to start the drive with the shortest time elapsed, the kickoff would have be fielded inside the 1 and then the return man would immediately step out of bounds. This could conceivably take only a few seconds.
I believe that that’s the best chance for having the ball start out at the 1 after the kickoff, with as little time elapsed as possible.
If the returner actually fielded the ball with a foot out of bounds when they first touch the ball, it’s a penalty against the kicking team (the same as having the kickoff go out of bounds unassisted). The Packers used this weird quirk in the rules to their advantage twice in recent years.
…I actually did know that, but in thinking about the hypothetical somehow mixed up the clock rules on kickoffs with the clock rules on punts .
I was also trying to think of a half-way realistic scenario to wind up with a kickoff return ending at the receiving team’s own one, rather than the receiving team deliberately cooperating with the hypothetical maximum time and down drive. I was thinking maybe a fumble on the return that gets batted around and knocked out at the 1. But there are a few just barely plausible scenarios I can think of that could result in the receiving team trying to field the ball at the 1 and winding up with it almost immediately out of bounds there.
So, revised absolute outer bounds for time of possession starting at the 1 yard line: 29:57 or so.
Considering that plays can can consume more than 5 seconds the drive doesn’t have to be 99 yards. Some of the longest plays in NFL history are around 15 seconds meaning a 99 yard or even shorter drive might not result in a score in just one half.
Perhaps the NFL could hire the IRS as consultants to make the rules simpler and more clear. That way we could all keep them straight.
Here’s another possibility that we may someday see.
Receivers today call for a fair catch if they perceive they’d be pasted immediately if they tried to run after the reception. If kickers can learn to send the ball high enough and still drop it on the last couple of yards of the field, we could see a situation where the kicking team’s defenders can run far enough fast enough to get into the receiver’s face before the ball comes down. No matter how nimble the receiver, he’s still got to wait until the ball gets down to his level before he can catch it.
Of course the NFL would / could simply move the kickoff line back to compensate.
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