Muff Kick
 

4th and 10 on team K’s 20 yard line. K1 kick is short and muffed by R2 at team K’s 30 hardline. The loose ball rolls behind the neutral zone and recovered by K3 at K’s 15 hardline. He is not down and trow’s a forward pas to eligible K5, but it is incomplete.
What the call and results of this play?

Legal play. It will be 1st and 10 for K at the previous spot.

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1. A kick remains a kick until it’s possessed or dead by rule.
2. A scrimmage kick which is recovered behind the neutral zone may be advanced by either team.
3. If R is first to touch a scrimmage kick beyond the neutral zone, it will be a new series for whichever team is in possession at the end of the down.

In your play, K has fulfilled all these requirements and will have 1/10 at the K-20.

The only reason this is paradoxic is that a series never starts in the middle of a down. It can start only at the beginning of a down, always as 1st. So this is why regardless of what happens to that pass, it's going to be 1st down. Even if it were an illegal forward pass, the "loss of down" would be inconsequential. And all the major codes agree on this.

Also, once K3 has recovered the ball, I don't think there's any sequence of subsequent fouls whose penalty enforcement could possibly restore the previous down. Or is there?

NCAA: everything that happened on the play is legal PROVIDED THAT K3 had not crossed the neutral zone prior to passing the ball. If he had, both he and the ball would have been across the line, making any forward pass (from both behind and beyond) the neutral zone an illegal forward pass (See 7-3-2-e). While it is arguable that this isn't the intent of that rule, we have nothing else to go on. According to what I'm hearing the OP say, K3 never was beyond the NZ, so the pass would have been legal.

The scrimmage kick crossing the NZ breaks the continuity of downs (Rule 6), so any possession of the ball by Team A (after Team B touching) would mean they keep it. The incomplete forward pass only stands to put the ball at the previous spot for the next down.

Good luck explaining it to the Team B coach.

That's interesting! You're saying that even if the passer and the ball had separately been in advance of the neutral zone some time before the ball was recovered and thrown, it's illegal for him to pass forward?

It is an illegal pass, if ...

However, in double checking, I missed the word "carrier." That is defined as:

You can't have a ball carrier without the ball AND the player. So now, I think unless the player ran the ball across the line then came back, him being across the line without the ball makes no difference. Amend my first paragraph accordingly.

Sorry Texas Aggie, but that is not true. In NCAA, you wouldn't have a forward pass to begin with because the ball is dead as soon as K (or A since NCAA doesn't use K/R) recovers the ball. It has nothing to do with where the ball is recovered, only the fact that the kick crossed the neutral zone. It will be A's ball 1st and 10 at the spot of recovery.
6-3-3
6-3-6-a
And the exact situation described in AR 6-3-1-I

muff
 

So this is a legal play in High School?

Yes, it's a legal play in FED. 1st and 10 for K at the K-20.

(On another note: the juxtaposition of a thread titled "Muff kick" by a poster named "surehands" made me chuckle).

There was a number of decades where Fed rules had it that possession by a K player of a kick made the ball dead regardless of its type or previous trajectory. That was during a time when their philosophy seemed to be that the only good ball was a dead one (for safety), or maybe the rules makers' motiv'n was to keep the rule book short, which having such a rule did, compared to having it as a dead ball in some cases & a live ball in others.

You're right. I shouldn't be making rules comments on my "spring break" which has just ended.

OK, so real quick: change the play a little to where the punt is from deep in A's territory. Everything happens like in the OP, except the ball isn't recovered. Now, the muff causes the ball to go back into A's end zone where it goes out of bounds.

Ruling?

In NCAA, it’s a safety. The impetus is still A’s punt since muffing a loose ball does not change responsibility unless the ball was at rest.

Same for NFHS.

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