Free Kick Option
 

We have begun reviewing rules and the practice test questions in our meetings. Last night we had a question that led to animated discussions.


The home team makes a fair catch of a punt (or is awarded one for kick catch interference) at their own 25 yard line with just seconds left in the game. On the first down play, quarterback A2 completes a pass to A3 who advances to B’s 28 where B2 grabs and pulls A2’s face mask to make the tackle in a side zone. Time expires during the play. Team A then requests to make a free kick from the center of the field at B’s 14. Ruling: request granted.


At the meeting I was adamant that this was false, but after reading, rereading, and reading the rule book and case book again, I am not so sure that this is false. Any ideas?

I don't have my books in front of me but it seems to me that if a down is replayed in which there was a fair catch or awarded fair catch that A will have the choice of spotting the ball anywhere between the hash marks. I think Redding may have had a quiz question that deals with this.

REPLY: The answer is TRUE. He can request a free kick.

Here's the rule which says he can choose to free kick again:
6-5-4: The captain may choose to free kick or snap anywhere between the inbounds lines on the yard line through the spot of the catch when a fair catch is made or through the spot of interference, when a fair catch is awarded. These choices remain if a dead ball foul occurs prior to the down, or a foul or an inadvertent whistle occurs during the down and the down is replayed. [Note: Contrary to some opinions, this down is really being replayed even though by his gain, he's being awarded a new series.]

And, here's the rule which says he can place the ball where he wants:
4-3-7: When a team may designate the spot along the proper yard line from which the ball is to be put in play, it shall have the same privilege if the down is to be replayed or a dead ball foul occurs.

Also, look at case book 6.5.4 Situation, specifically part (b).

Darn it! I'm Canadian and I knew the answer to this one!

It would have been fun to be the one to supply the answer!

Bob M., the thing that was bothering me was, in fact, the "replaying of the down" - I couldn't get myself to believe that this was a replayed down. But if you strip all of the fluff away and get down to the nuts and bolts an accepted live ball penalty (with the obvious exceptions) requires the down to be replayed.

Weird one - thank you very much.

I'm lost here... according to what I know of the rules (which is not much), the free kick after a fair catch is to be requested after the fair catch. But team A decided for a scrimmage play and completed a pass. At the end of that pass, a PF occurred and time expired.
From what I know, team A has a chance for a scrimmage play without time to end the game and, therefore, is not allowed to choose the spot of the ball.
I can't see a down being replayed since both the pass and the penalty resulted in a first down for team A.

Am I wrong?

May sound outrageous, but Bob M. hit it on the head. Pretty severe penalty.

You are incorrect. In NF, the team can decide to do a FCFKick even when they first decided to snap the ball and their was an accepted penalty on the play, or an IW occured. See Bob's post above and their is a case play in Redddings which covers it.

Reading the rule, an FK can be requested after a penalty on either team, correct?

Yes, if the down is replayed, the same choices are on the table for A - they can snap the ball or free kick and pick the spot.

Hey Bob,

what if time has not expired yet? Say it's a tie game and 2 seconds are left. "A" elects to free-kick after the original play above (maybe they are further out, making the field goal attempt a little more dicey and therefore the free kick option more attractive).
When do you start the clock?

I'm not Bob, but you start the clock as would on every other free kick. The timing is no different than if it is a free kick after a score.

This I know, but what does that mean in the grand scheme of things (consider the field goal attempt is good)and do you explain that to the coach once he indicates his choice to free kick?

REPLY: Kirby's right. And think about this...if the free kick makes it to the goal line, the clock won't start at all. It will be R's ball 1-10 with 2 seconds left...provided, of course, that the attempt was unsuccessful.

REPLY: No...I wouldn't necessarily explain all the ramifications of his choice to free kick. If he knew enough to request the free kick, I'm going to trust that he knows how a free kick is administered and how the clock behaves during a free kick. Would you do it differently?

Since A, or K, knows what he is trying I wouldn't explain much to him. However B, or R, might have no clue and needs to have some things explained to him as to what exactly is going on. All he needs to know is that to him this is a kickoff from a different spot and that it can score 3 points. That tells him all the rules about timing and possession he needs to know about.

Yeah, but also think about the consequences if the kick is good. Are we not going to have a score with no time expired and now "A/K" kicking off? Since all this is a pretty unusual situation, I think it might be prudent to explain that to the coach beforehand because I'd bet you'll be doing some explaining after. And it might be a good idea to go over some of the fun that could happen during said kick off with the crew.

When the coach tells you he is planning to free kick after the FC, with 2 seconds left, I don't think it would be a problem to tell him the clock will not start at all if the kick makes it to the EZ, or is no good, and that there would still be 2 seconds left. I would tell him that cuz if he is close enough he may choose to do a regular scrimmage kick to run out the clock, although I'd take my chances doing a pouch kick. The odds of something going wrong there are much less than the scrimmage kick getting blocked and returned.

REPLY: Since it's after a FC, why wouldn't he just run a safe scrimmage play. No reason to attempt any kind of free kick if he wanted to run out the clock.

One of us is confused Bob. I thought they were talking about B's coach wanting to kick a FK after FC to win the game after fielding the ball with 2 seconds left. In that case he may want to know the clock would not start at all if the kick was good or not good but made it to the GL. Maybe I totally missed the point of the question.

REPLY: I guess we were just talking past each other. I thought you were saying you'd tell him about the clock so that he could make a pooch kick or some other kind of kick where it would be legally touched and the clock would start. I was just asking that if he was concerned about the clock not possibly starting, why not just run a play from scrimmage.

While not intending to hijack the thread (perhaps this is better for another one) but I wish someone would explain to me the rationale for this rule. I'm certainly not against the fair catch, but it seems like it gives the receiving team a good deal: I won't advance it, but you can't pummell me. Either way, allowing the receiving team to take an extra bonus: a free kick with field goal points is a bit over the top.

REPLY: I don't exactly know the rationale, but it was also a feature of the NCAA rules until 1951. The NCAA had previously eliminated the fair catch from their rules, but put it back in for the 1951 season and at the same time eliminated the free kick option following the FC.

The FK after FC is also a rule in the NFL, so NCAA is the only one that does not have it in their rules.

Yeah, but in the NFL the team that recieves the FC has to choose to free-kick or scimmage and if they choose to scrimmage the ball, then they can't free-kick afterwards, even if there's a penalty on the scrimmage play after the FC.

Or I'm still wrong on this?

And, considering that there's no way K can score other than via FG -- in Fed they can't advance their own free kick, and the ball is dead once it crosses the goal line plane and its failure to score a goal is evident -- what's the smart and legal way for R to play it?

To avoid any chance of their committing a foul, can they leave all their players off the field, saying they're just playing 11 short for that down? What if K calls and is given time out, and team R tries that at the resumption -- is it failure to be ready in a timely fashion for resumption of play?

Robert

Heh...depends how widely you cast the net. The fair catch & free kick is one of the oldest rules in this line of games called football, going back well into its ancestry, but many of them no longer have either the fair catch or the free kick after it in their rules.

In "early versions of modern football" (to invent a category) in the British Isles, a fair catch or attempted fair catch was the only way to legally handle a live ball, and in the various derivatives of that game (or family of games) those particular rules have taken various twists & turns.

The games that would become soccer kept the fair catch for a while before it was eventually eliminated in the 19th Century.

Rugby and some other games broadened the conditions under which the ball could be handled, but kept the fair catch a long time. Rugby League eliminated the fair catch in the 1960s. Rugby Union still has the fair catch-free kick, but limited it progressively starting over 30 years ago to where you can now do it only inside your own 22 m (25 yards) line, and you can't score a goal from it any more.

Australian Rules has rather exalted the fair catch-free kick to become possibly the highlight of the game. It's the only current game I know of that gives you full free kick privileges from a fair catch of your own side's kick.

Canadian football eliminated the fair catch I think a few years before the NCAA abortively did in 1950.

There have been other versions of American football that dispensed with the fair catch, as played by various circuits. Arena football and Major Indoor Football League don't have it, nor did the XFL or the WFL.

The invented USAn game speedball has a kind of fair catch in the vein of the original and somewhat similarly to Gaelic and Australian Rules football, but that similarity may be coincidental rather than by design. It's not that you get a free kick, but it allows you to handle the ball, even off your own side's (or your own) foot, while you can't handle a rolling or bouncing ball. So depending what you count, you might consider speedball (and its variant speed-a-way) and NCAA's as being the only games that have a kind of fair catch but no free kick from it.

North American football's innovation in the fair catch was what Texas Aggie thinks of as the no-pummel rule: the ability and requirement to call for the catch in advance and not get hit at the moment of touching the ball. In most other versions of football that have or had the fair catch, it's ruled only retroactively that the ball was fairly caught, although rugby required the fair catch to be signaled simultaneously with the catch.

Robert

I guess my net is not that big. :D

Reminds me of this video.

:)