NFT Rule Question

[coggs]

If a punt never crosses the line of scrimmage, it can be recovered and advanced by either team.  This doesn't matter if it is blocked, kicked straight up in the air, or the punter misses it (Landeta in Chicago). 

Once the ball crosses the line of scrimmage, then the rules we are accustomed to are applied.  If the kicking team touches the ball first, then that is the worst spot the receiving team can get the ball.  So, ball is punted, brushes a member of the kicking team somewhere beyond the LOS, receiving team picks up and runs.  Before the end of the run they fumble and kicking team recovers.  Receiving team gets the ball at the spot of the first touching (where it brushed the member of the kicking team).  This rule also applies if the ball is blocked by receiving team behind LOS but the ball travels beyond the LOS.

Same rules apply for FGA.

[Uni]

So in the case where it's punted and the receiving team deflects it at the Los and it travels past the LOS then the ball hits the leg of the receiving team, the kicking team picks it up and possesses it. Whose ball is it? The kicking team right? Just the same as if it wasn't tipped. That's how I've always understood it to be.

Last night the broadcast team called it for the receiving team because it was blocked before any possession.

Ed, I watched that play again (it's a Patriots punt in the 4th with 13:30 left) and after the deflection, it ended up skidding past the line of scrimmage and the first player to touch it was a member of kicking team who downed it. Was there another punt or were you misremembering that it touched a Steeler past the LOS?

[Ed Vette]

Ed, I watched that play again (it's a Patriots punt in the 4th with 13:30 left) and after the deflection, it ended up skidding past the line of scrimmage and the first player to touch it was a member of kicking team who downed it. Was there another punt or were you misremembering that it touched a Steeler past the LOS?

That was it.