Tag: fair catch

Sean Payton thinks NFL’s fair catch rule will have unintended consequences

The NFL will spot kickoffs at the 25-yard line after a fair catch. Here’s why that could result in more drives starting at the 40-yard line.

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The NFL made several rule changes this offseason, including spotting the ball at the 25-yard line after a fair catch on a kickoff.

Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton was not necessarily in favor of that rule, in part because it will make it harder to benefit from shorter kickoffs following a penalty.

“There’ll be, strategically, more opportunities where teams who are kicking the ball decide not to kick it high,” Payton said on June 14. “Let’s say there’s a foul on a scoring play, and you have it on the 50-yard line. You kick it in the air, they fair catch it and it’s at the 25. You don’t realize any of the penalty. I was kind of pushing for if that were the case, I would have thought that we would have put the ball on the 10 to realize the 15-yard personal foul, but that’s not the case.”

Payton believes that there could be unintended consequences of this new rule. If teams start kicking the ball low, it could bounce near the sideline, giving a returner an opportunity to field it with a foot out of bounds. That would technically put the ball “out of bounds,” a penalty that spots the ball at the 40-yard line.

“The last thing we’re going to do — unless we’re late in the game — is put it high in the air and start at the 25. Because of that, you’re going to see balls on the ground more. We just did a straddle rule [at practice]. You guys have all seen those balls near the sideline and the returners kind of in that dilemma of is it going out of bounds? If they’ve got a foot that is on the paint of the sideline and then touch the ball in play, it’s out of bounds and it goes to the 40. We call it straddle. I think we’re going to see that situation probably tick up a little bit as a result of the rule change.”

So after the NFL made an effort to reduce kickoffs and spot the ball at the 25-yard line after a fair catch, the result could instead be more teams kicking the ball low — hoping for a return. More low kicks could lead to more kicks going out of bounds and more “straddle” situations, which could mean more drives starting at the 40-yard line instead of the 25-yard line.

Unless kickers can avoid the sidelines, coaches might lobby for the NFL’s new fair catch rule to be one-and-done after the 2023 season.

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Seahawks coach Pete Carroll doesn’t like new kickoff fair catch rule

One of them allows kickoff returners to call a fair catch and their team will automatically get the ball at their own 25-yard line.

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The NFL has made a few changes to the rulebook ahead of the 2023 season. One of them allows kickoff returners to call a fair catch and their team will automatically get the ball at their own 25-yard line.

Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll is one of many who don’t like the new rule. Here’s what Carroll had to say about it last week, per Bob Condotta at the Seattle Times:

“Yeah, I didn’t like the change. Worrying about the game a little bit, but the other side is worrying about the rest of it too. There’s some numbers that maybe we can change and help some people not get injured. It’s really hard to not look in that direction and support it. We’ve got to support our guys and take care of them. That’s the way we voted. But I was battling. We worked really hard at it.”

The league is trying to cut down on concussions and some of the most-violent collisions take place during kickoff returns, when players on both sides have the time to gather full speed before making contact. It may only be a matter of time before kickoffs are legislated out of the game completely.

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Garrett on Austin’s punt return: ‘There might have been an opportunity’

The Cowboys coach says punt returner Tavon Austin was not ordered to fair catch a late punt versus the Vikings just to preserve the clock.

One of the plays that stands out – and not in a good way – from the Cowboys’ 28-24 loss to the Vikings was Tavon Austin’s fair catch of a Minnesota punt in the final 30 seconds. A seemingly safe decision that, in the moment, saved maximum time and minimized the risk of a turnover or lost yardage on a return, may have been excessively safe. Looking back, it certainly made Dak Prescott’s job harder as he tried in vain to engineer a comeback in the game’s final plays.

In speaking with 105.3 The Fan on Monday morning, head coach Jason Garrett dispelled the notion that Austin had been instructed to fair catch the punt no matter what.

“You lay out the situation: let’s not waste a lot of time,” Garrett said. “If you don’t have a real good opportunity here to go make a return directly north and south, don’t waste a lot of time. In that situation, the way he saw it, he went ahead and made the fair catch and gave us the opportunity around midfield. In hindsight, when you look at it, there might have been an opportunity for him not to do that and hit it north and south and see if we could make some yards on it.”

Looking at replays of the punt from various angles, it certainly seemed as though Austin had a great chance to eat up some valuable yardage with a return.

The nearest Vikings player is more than 15 yards away from Austin. It appeared he could have gone even further than that with the blockers he had in place. It’s not unthinkable that, given Austin’s speed, he could have streaked toward the sideline and gotten the ball inside the red zone and still left plenty of time for Prescott and Co. to run a few high-percentage plays.

“That’s a situation where there’s a lot of different scenarios,” Garrett said. “In that situation, there’s a school of thought that it’s absolutely a fair catch situation, so you don’t bleed the clock and you give your offense a chance at midfield to go score a touchdown. And then if the returner, he has that in his mind, and he has an opportunity to go make a play, we certainly encourage him to do that. In that situation, he fair caught it.”

It’s easy to look at a freeze-frame or even a replay and pin blame on Austin for not being more aggressive. But he is a veteran return man who’s fielding the punt in that situation for a reason. Maybe he saw things differently. Did the Vikings coverage team slow up when Austin signaled for the fair catch? Of course they did. Maybe his lanes weren’t as wide-open as they looked to those sitting at home. Or maybe the idea of preserving the clock was emphasized too strongly on the sideline for Austin to feel like he could freelance.

Either way, the decision to play it overly safe undoubtedly limited the offense’s playbook for the final 24 seconds. It’s a play that could end up haunting the Cowboys as the postseason draws nearer.

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