Officially Speaking: Rough times for kickers
Editor's Note: Officially Speaking with Steve Hall is a feature that allows readers to ask questions about high school football rules, and runs weekly throughout the season. Hall has been a New Hampshire high school official since 1989 and has officiated nearly 300 NHIAA regular-season varsity games. He has also officiated more than 25 playoff games, and worked his 11th championship game last year (Pinkerton at Nashua South). Hall, who is a member of the New Hampshire Football Officials' Association Board of Directors, has been the NHFOA rules interpreter since 2001, and is also the New Hampshire representative on the National Federation of High Schools rules committee. Questions, which may be edited for clarity, can be submitted to rbrown@nhfootballreport.com. Please include your hometown.
Question: I have a two-part question I'd like to submit. I was at the Portsmouth-Con-Val game Friday night. In the first quarter the Portsmouth punter fielded a bad snap, ran to his right and got the kick off while on the run. He was hit and roughing the kicker was called. Later in the game the Con-Val punter was hit (hard) after he kicked the ball, but there was no penalty. I heard the referee tell the Con-Val coach that no penalty was called because there was some question about whether or not the kick would get off. I wasn't close enough to the field to hear the full explanation. Can you clarify this?
Second, what is the rule with regard to roughing the kicker when a punter becomes a runner? Thanks.
-- Hampton
Answer: This must be the year for roughing-the-kicker questions, because I've been asked about similar plays three times already. Roughing the kicker occurs if a defensive player blocks, tackles or charges into the
kicker. However, roughing the kicker is not called when any of the following occur:
(a) contact is unavoidable because it isn't reasonably certain that a kick will be made
(b) the defense touches the kick near the kicker and thereafter, contact is unavoidable
(c) contact is slight and partially caused by movement of the kicker
(d) contact is caused by the defender being blocked into the kicker
To answer your questions, you need to understand what a "kicker" is. A player becomes a kicker when his lower leg contacts the ball, and he remains a kicker until he has had a reasonable opportunity to regain his balance. In the plays above, it sounds like the player ran with the ball then abruptly pulled up and kicked it. If the referee judged that the defensive player had committed to his charge prior to the runner becoming a kicker, roughing the kicker wouldn't be called because of exception (a) above. It sounds like that's what happened in the second instance that you describe. However, if the referee judged that the defensive player had
sufficient time to realize that the ball was going to be kicked, roughing would be called.
The difficulty with calling roughing the kicker is that it's entirely a judgment call by the referee. Players are usually moving at top speed, and if a potential kicker begins to run prior to kicking the ball, the referee must make a call while he is on the run, which increases the difficulty of the call. Moreover, the referee's positioning can be a factor as to whether he can observe the action of the defense. In short, it's the toughest call to make for a referee. Making a judgment call one way or another doesn't make the call a bad call, because someone will disagree
with it regardless of whether a foul is called.
-- Plaistow
Answer: He's wrong. Although it would be a very rare occurrence, there can be a one-point safety scored during a try. A safety occurs when a team forces the ball across their own goal line and the ball is declared dead in
their team's possession in the end zone. If the offense fumbled the ball during a try and the defense attempted to recover the fumble but instead muffed the ball into their own end zone and then recovered in their own end
zone (or the ball went out of bounds in the end zone), it would be a safety and the offense would score one point. Once the defense gains possession of the ball on a try, the ball becomes dead and the down is over. For this play to occur, the covering official would have to rule that the fumble would not have gone into the end zone absent the muff by the defense. Stated differently, the covering official would have to rule that the defense supplied the force to put the ball into its own end zone.
Question: If a punt is kicked low enough so it hits the defensive (receiving) team beyond the line of scrimmage and the ball is recovered by the kicking team, does the kicking team retain possession even if the spot
where the ball is recovered is short of a first down?
Answer: Yes, provided that the touching of the kick by the receiving team occurred beyond the expanded neutral zone (which extends two yards beyond the line of scrimmage). Touching of a low scrimmage kick in or behind the
expanded neutral zone is ignored. If the receiving team touches a kick beyond the expanded neutral zone, it will be a first down for the team in possession at the end of the down. In this case, the ball would become dead when the kicking team recovered, and the kicking team would be awarded a first down at the spot of the recovery.
-- Keene
