[golfnref]

Originally Posted by Robert Goodman

Sorry, then. They must be writing them even less rigorously than they used to.


With seconds left, they have only to defend against a scrimmage play instead of an open field kick return play. There are a lot more runbacks that distance for touchdowns than there are scrimmage plays that distance for touchdowns, even though the forward pass isn't legal during a runback. There is no effective "prevent defense" on a kickoff. The next best thing is to kick anywhere but deep, but it amazes me how often they do that too!

There was a long period in Fed rules, as well as a shorter one in NCAA, where the option of making K repeat the down with a distance penalty wasn't there, and in high school there were a number of teams, especially JV, who would simply belt the ball out of bounds on a fly, because they didn't consider it worth their practice time to cover kickoffs.

The situation was even more striking even earlier. Kicking off (at that time from midfield, the 55 yard line) directly out of bounds was penalized as a do-over. Doing it a second time was penalized by forfeiting the kickoff to the other team. If they too kicked off out of bounds twice consecutively (assuming the result of the play was not taken), the first team would scrimmage at midfield. According to Spalding's at the time, this charade was played out repeatedly until the rules were changed.

Robert

The coach who wishes to employ the strategy you suggest in your post gets screwed by the rules. Oh well, life's just not fair.