Maybe they should do away with the coin toss at the start of football games. That’s kind of random
I sure as hell wouldn’t!
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Or just wait until 30 seconds are left. Flip that coin to see who gets the ball.
The coin toss odds would be a lot better than those for recovering an onside kick. Seriously, recovering an onsides kick needs to be more difficult than winning a coin toss. It needs to require a certain amount of skill to execute the kick, and a competition for possession. The odds should overwhelmingly favor the receiving team but it shouldn’t be so difficult, that the element of surprise is removed. Randomness is always a part of the game. When they made the football oblong, they obviously didn’t care about how it bounced.
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Sounds good, but in practice, it’s a “hope we get lucky” play. Every honest fan realizes this before the play starts. That distinguishes it from all the other unlucky/lucky bounces that happen during a game.
Dicker the Free Kicker:
That was pretty cool.
The makers of “The Replacements” missed a trick here. Or maybe they thought it was too far fetched for the movie-going public to believe that - despite wall-to-wall coverage of all the football - there was still a rule that no one had heard of.
This rule is not as obscure as you think. It’s rare because it’s so situationally specific. It’s tried at least a couple of times per season, I think, but almost never successful. Now we just need to see this tried using a drop kick. Or a 1-point safety, which has never occurred in the NFL.
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Did someone give him a sock?
What’s the one point safety?
It occurred once in the Texas-TAMU game. Offense attempts a two point conversion, turns it over in the end zone, defense advances it out and then is tackled back in the end zone. 1 point safety for the offense.
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“Rugby Football” was invented, so the story goes, when William Webb Ellis got bored of playing soccer, picked up the ball and ran with it.
I will take some convincing that the American version of football was not invented when some Ivy League law students got bored playing rugby and decided to re-write the rulebook.
I’m pretty sure that’s exactly how it happened.
Australian Rules Football was obviously created by a group of drunk guys coming up with the craziest game they could imagine.
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The “rules” in Aussie Rules Football is a lie as big as the island itself.
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Technically called a “conversion safety”, it can occur on any PAT try. Defense gains possession outside their own end zone then carries the ball back into their own end zone where the ball is ruled down. The aforementioned UT/TAMU game was on a kick. It also happened on a kick in the 2013 Fiesta Bowl between Oregon and TCU. Brad Nessler was the PBP announcer for both times. It’s never happened in the NFL.
Well it’s in the name…
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It’s cute that they felt the need to assure everyone that there are, in fact, rules.
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“This stone commemorates the exploits of William Webb Ellis who with a FINE DISREGARD for the rules of football as played in his time first took the ball in his arms and ran with it thus originating the distinctive feature of the Rugby game. AD 1823”
More seriously, while the Webb Ellis story is great, there is virtually no factual evidence to support it other than he was a student at the Rugby School and played whatever form of football the school played at the time.
As I’m sure you know, there’s a longer, more complicated origin story for the game where the various private schools all had their own rules for “football” and teams played under the home school’s rules until eventually the Rugby School’s rule became prevalent.
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I am trying to imagine the meltdown that would be happening in the B&Q if this was the Texans and not the Vikings.
…and it seems that Detroit has decided that their best chance to win is to keep the Vikes’ offense on the field. 