This weekend, the Pipers went to the exhibition game for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, with the Edmonton Eskimos visiting.
the weather was atrocious, with rain and wind gusting up to 80 km/hour.
Edmonton was punting into the wind. Nice high punt, ball gets to the top of the arc, and then the wind hits it. Forward momentum eliminated, ball just drops straight down - and into the hands of the Eskimo punter, who recovered his own kick (allowable under CFL rules).
Eskimos go from third down on their 20 to first down at centre field, thanks to the wind.
(Didn’t help them in the end: Riders won, 23-22.)
So, do you have any wacky weather stories, where the weather affected the game?
A few years ago there was an extremely windy Bears game. The opponents attempted a field goal, but the wind messed with it so badly that a Bears player caught it in the end zone and (IIRC) ran it all the way back 100 yards for a touchdown. Before that I didn’t even know you were allowed to run back a missed field goal attempt.
This type of play is not always due to weather. Often, when a team sets up for a particularly long field goal, a member of the opposing team stands in the end zone in case it falls short. This is typical if you have a superb punt or kick returners and the probability of taking it the other way is high. Otherwise, you simply leave the ball alone and take the ball at the point of the missed kick.
I’ve heard that if a point-after kick misses and the defending team manages to run it all the way for a “touchdown”, it’s scored as two points, the same as a two-point conversion. I doubt this has ever happened in the NFL, though.
It actually happens fairly often in the CFL (though not because the kick falls short, just goes wide, as the goal posts are at the front of the end zone!) In fact, the Roughriders will remember a particular time when that person may or may not have been a 13th man on the field…!
Also, this crazy play between the Argonauts and the Alouettes; the game was tied, so an Argos receiver was placed in the end zone in case the kick went wide. It did, the Argos kicked it back out, the Als kicked it back in, and it resulted in a touchdown for the Als.
I’m sure there are more mundane situations, but I just love posting this one
I remember that game very well. Bears vs. 49ers and Devin Hester caught the ball in the endzone and kind of stood there suckering everyone (including me) into thinking he wasn’t going to do anything with the ball until he began running. I remember (barely) being able to contain myself from yelling at the TV for him to run it out because Nathan Vasher had done the exact same thing for the Bears a year ago, so you know everyone should have that in their minds. Hester did run it and he ended up tying the record with a 108 yard return, which has since been broken I guess. That game was so windy that when the 49ers attempted a field goal again, the ball essentially made a right angle turn in midair at the top of its arc.
I also remember watching the Fog Bowl and there was a point in the game – about all of the second half – where you couldn’t see anything on the TV except the fog.
There was also a game between the Buffalo Bills and the NE Patriots that had very bad weather or high winds. I don’t remember the details of that one, other than a field goal attempt basically dropping from the sky.
In 2007 the Steelers played the Dolphins on a very rainy night. The field in Pittsburgh is poorly maintained on a good day, and after a day of rain it was like cold soup with chunks of turf floating in it. During the second half, the Dolphins punted the ball and the Steelers’ return man decided to let the ball land instead of catching it. The ball embedded itself in the turf like a dart. The Steelers kicked a field goal in the final minute and won 3-0.
It used to happen more often in the NFL, until they moved the goal post back to the end line (before the 1974 season, IIRC). Now, it’s a play which happens extremely rarely, almost always on a miss of a very long field goal attempt, as Jackknifed Juggernaut notes, but that’s mostly because nearly all missed field goals are airborne as they go past the end line, and are well above the reach of a returner.
You’re conflating two different games. Hester returned a missed FG for a touchdown, but wind wasn’t an issue; it just happened to be a very long FG attempt, just before halftime, that fell short.
There was a separate game in which a FG was blown so badly by the wind that it reached the end line near the corner of the end zone. That one, however, would have been quite impossible to return.
That’s in college football only, and it does happen from time to time in college. You can return a blocked kick, fumble, or interception.
And because on said long field goal you need to run it out at least to the original spot of the kick (which is where the ball would be placed if the missed FG sailed over the end line), and that may lie outside of the 40 yard line…
Oh, for weather, there was one game I remember watching, I think it was Green Bay vs. Houston, where there was a foot of snow on the ground… In Houston. There was one play, where the ball carrier (I think a Packer) got tackled, and then slid another full five yards before stopping.
In Rugby Union it’s by no means unusual for a kicker to gather his own punt. The object isn’t always distance pure and simple but to set up an attack beginning with the kicking side reclaiming their own kick having got behind the first line of defence. Since any reclaimer other than the kicker must be onside, he has to have been behind the kicker when the punt went in, or to have been overtaken by him while the ball’s aloft. That usually means the kicker haring upfield as soon as boot has hit ball, and he may well be first to the spot where it’s coming down.
Amusing video! But after watching it a few times, it appears to me that a goal should not have been given (depending on a couple “ifs” that are not made clear in the video).
