That’s how it works in American football too, unless it’s batted out from the end zone. Then where does the play continue from there? The ball was in the end zone, you can’t start a play from there. That’s why it’s not that easy anymore.
Not quite - in the NFL if a fumbled ball goes out of bounds, the last team who possessed the ball gets it back. In the CFL, last team to touch it.
Another quirk of the NFL kickoff rules is that if the ball goes out of bounds before it reaches the end zone, it’s a penalty and the receiving team gets the ball on the 40-yard line. Furthermore, if a receiving player has a foot out of bounds when he takes hold of the ball, the same penalty applies. Here’s an example:
How does it work in on-line kicks in the NFL?
In the CFL, the hands team is told to try to grab the ball and pull it in, but if you can’t do that, try to knock it out of bounds and get possession that way.
On an onside kick, I suspect that it’d work the same as a “regular” kickoff – a kick that goes out of bounds (even if batted) becomes the possession of the receiving team, with a penalty against the kicking team tacked on, for kicking the ball out of bounds.
Wait, so if the kickoff goes deep and it’s near the out-of-bounds line, it’s to the receiving player’s advantage to stick a foot out while he catches it?
I think the illegal bat overrules the out of bounds penalty - there would be a 5 yard illegal bat penalty against the receiving team, and they’d rekick.
Yep. The idea is that on a kickoff, the kicker is under zero pressure and can place the ball anywhere he wants, so letting him kick it near the sidelines gives the kicking team too much advantage. So he can’t intentionally kick it out of bounds at the 5, because that means every drive would have to be 95 yards, and if he tries to kick it close to the sidelines to make for a more difficult return, he runs the risk of it going out of bounds.
In the linked video, remember that on a kickoff the kicking team is free to recover the ball once it’s gone 10 yards, so if one of the Titans had gotten there a little faster, they could have fallen on the ball while the receiver was waiting around for it to get close enough to the sideline to scoop up.
No, and I was partially incorrect. As per the NFL rulebook on kickoffs:
If the kickoff goes out of bounds, without a member of the receiving team touching it, the receiving team gains possession of the ball, either 25 yards downfield from the spot of the kickoff, or at the spot at which it went out of bounds (receiving team’s choice).
However, if the receiving team touches the ball before it goes out of bounds, the receiving team takes possession at the spot at which it went out of bounds.
So, on a deeper kickoff that’s near the sideline, no, it’s not advantageous for the receiver to try to force the ball out of bounds, unless it’s a choice between batting it out bounds or allowing the kicking team a chance to recover the kick.
Ah, but you’re forgetting Rule 3, Section 21, Article 3, Item 2: “A loose ball is out of bounds when it touches a boundary line or anything that is on or outside such line, including a player, an official, or a pylon.” So because the player was out of bounds when he touched the ball, it was immediately out of bounds.
I’m not forgetting it at all. It’s covered under the idea of “the kickoff going out of bounds without ever being touched by the receiving team.” If it’s touched by a member of the receiving team who is, himself, out of bounds, that’s covered (though, admittedly, I didn’t explicitly state that).
But then it is advantageous for a kickoff returner to catch the ball with one foot out of bounds, as long as no other member of the receiving team touched it first. No one touched it before it went out of bounds, because it wasn’t out of bounds until it was touched by a player who was already out of bounds. That’s what happened in the first 2 examples of the video zimaane linked.
I stand corrected, now that I’ve watched the video. As the announcer says in that first play on the video, it’s a quirk of the rules – if a returner is, himself, out of bounds, when he touches a live kickoff, it makes the kick become out of bounds, without apparently establishing that it was the receiving team which had forced it out of bounds (which would lead to the ball being spotted at that spot, rather than the “kickoff out of bounds” penalty).
Is that a recent rule change, or possibly a difference between high school/college/pro? I seem to recall kickers deliberately aiming for the corner, with the ideal kickoff going out of bounds without being touched right at the 1 (but that was risky, because if it crossed the goal line before it went out, it’d be a touchback). Maybe it depended on bouncing first, which makes it even more risky, because footballs tend to bounce unpredictably, but in the cases I remembered, when it did happen, it was regarded as very good.
In the NFL, as far as I can remember (back to the 1970s, at least), a kickoff that goes out of bounds has always been a bad thing for the kicking team (and bouncing before it goes out of bounds hasn’t ever made a difference, I don’t think).
You may be thinking of punts – if a punt goes out of bounds, that’s where it’s downed (and putting one out of bounds near an opponent’s end one is called a “coffin corner punt”). But, one doesn’t see coffin-corner punts very often anymore, as the “drop punt” style (which was adapted from Australian football starting in the 1990s) is a more reliable way to try to pin a punt deep in the other team’s territory – if done correctly, a drop punt’s trajectory and spin gives it a fairly low likelihood to bounce into the end zone.
Yes, the usual strategy on punts from midfield is to kick with a high arc and hope that a player on the kicking team can get to the ball before it goes to the end zone. The receiving team still gets the ball, but with poor field position.
OK, I probably am thinking of punts (and the term “coffin corner” rings a bell). Thanks for clearing that up.
And the reason why there isn’t a penalty for punting out of bounds is that the punter is under enormous pressure (unlike a kickoff), because he’s got to cleanly catch the snap, take a step or 2 and kick it, all while anywhere between 800 and 2000 lb. of defenders are attempting to smash him flat. So it’s not nearly as easy to do as putting a kickoff out of bounds at the 5.
A punt going out of bounds can be a penalty in the CFL, but not always.
If the ball goes past the receiving teams’s 20 yard line before going out (the coffin corner), that’s okay, no penalty.
If it goes out before crossing the 20 yard line, the receiving team has the option of taking the ball where it went out, plus ten yards, or requiring the punting team to re-kick, 10 yards back front the first kick.
What happens if the punter is already punting from behind their own goal line (meaning the line of scrimmage is deep in the red zone)? Is it a half the distance thing?
They have to get the ball past their own 20 yard line. If it goes out before that, it’s an illegal punt. I don’t recall it happening, as most punters can get it at least 30 yards.