Safety or Touchback
 

This one caused a lively discussion in our association.

The LOS is K's 3 yard line. K's kick crosses the LOS where:

a. While in flight it touches R1
b. After touching the ground it rebounds off R1's leg

in both cases, the ball rebounds into K's end zone where it is recovered by K.

What do you have, a safety or a touchback?

I am looking at this on an NCAA angle. It seems to me even though this sounds funny that this is a saftey on NCAA. NCAA guys help me out here. I think that impetus has not yet changed. Teh ball was still put in endzone by teh kick but the touching beyond teh NZ tells me this rule is not good. I say righteously the K should get the ball on a TB at the 20. The right ruling may be saftey though.

REPLY: For Federation...

1. No question...this is a safety since you cannot add force to a kick in flight. Therefore, the force putting the ball into K's endzone is the kick.
2. A little trickier. Force may be added to a grounded kick that enters K's end zone. It's up to the covering official to determine whether or not R's inadvertent touching of the grounded kick sufficiently changed its direction so that it could be considered the only cause for the ball entering K's end zone. If so, R's force put the ball there and result is a TB.

For NCAA, Both situations will be a safety, since the ball is not at rest when contacted by R. At least, I believe that's correct.

NF
A. Safety 8-5-1 The force that put the ball into the end zone was the kick. Since it was still in flight, a new force can not be applied.

B. Touchback 8-5-3b R’s muff put the ball in the end zone. R's muff is a new force.

NCAA - we had this question on a quiz last week. Safety. K can recover, and if it were not in the endzone, it would be K's ball at the spot. But as you said, the impetus was caused by the kick, and it is recovered in the endzone, so it is a safety.

Bob m. is correct once again. In B. that is a judgement call.

Similar play, then:

After a couple of USC's, we're kicking off from the 10. Kick is a line drive that hit's R's helmet after going 10 yards, and rebounds over K's head and out of the end zone. What do you have? (Either ruleset).

Safety in both.

In NCAA, for the reasons mentioned above. Only kicking or batting a loose ball changes the ball's impetus (read: force in NF) if the ball is not at rest. If it is at rest, then any contact with it will be considered new impetus and therefore a TB. Of course there are a couple of exceptions like being blocked into the ball (when it's at rest), etc. but those really don't apply.

As for Fed, once the ball is grounded (at rest or not) we can have new force due to a muff. But again, it's got to be a clear attempt to gain possession. In mcrowder's case, ricocheting off of R's helmet doesn't change force, and certainly not if the ball hasn't been grounded yet. If it had been grounded, and it bounced off of R's helmet as he was reaching for it then I'd have to think long and hard about it, but if he didn't know what hit him, then he couldn't have been trying to gain possession and therefore it's not a muff--no new force so it's a safety. Just remember that in Fed, merely touching or contact is not necessarily a muff.

Here is a case where a little common sense is helpful. K has gotten themselves in a jam and in forced to kick from their 3. Not only that, they've made a poor kick and it hits R and rebounds. If you were to rule that R provided a new force, you're letting K out of jail on a doubtful call. K got in the jam and failed to get out so calling a TB and giving them a 1 & 10 on the 20 would not be a good choice unless you were 100+% absolutely positive that R gave it a new force. When in doubt, it's a safety.

This is a crappy result for K. I understand the rule, but the result, I think is unfair.

I don't know why you would think it's unfair. K got themselves jammed back up on their 3 yard line, ran out of downs and then got off a pretty poor kick. To give them a 1&10 at the 20 as a reward would be unfair. They deserve a saftey, if not worse.

It's unfair because...absent R's act of muffing the ball K would not give up 2 points. It seems R benefits from its own mistake.

So what would be fair, if you were the rules-writer?

Fair or not isn't the question to be debated. New Force or new Impetus is what can be debated and in both cases there was neither a new force nor new impetus per rule.

The "kick" put the ball into their own EZ and that's all that matters. Safety is the correct result.

Instead of thinking of it as a bad break for K, think how lucky they are that they covered the ball in the endzone before R did.