Tag: touchdown

The 12 Posts of Playoffs : 6 Points Per Touchdown

football, basics, playoffs, touchdown

 

Here is possibly the biggest football misconception in existence: touchdowns are worth 7 points.

In a true or false test, that would be false. Because it is.

Touchdowns are worth 6 points!

Here’s the deal: when a touchdown is scored, the team that scored the touchdown gets another play to tack more points on to the touchdown. Most choose to kick an extra point, a kicking play kicked from the 2-yard line. Almost always, it’s a sure bet because a kick at the distance is a chip shot for an NFL kicker. Thus, most teams earn 7 points from most touchdowns.

But there is another option for scoring after touchdowns. The scoring team can opt to try a 2-point conversion. Instead of kicking an extra point from the 2-yard line, they can try to get the football into the end zone (by running or passing – just like a touchdown) from the 2-yard line. If they do, they earn 2 points, and in that case, the entire touchdown transaction would be worth 8 points.

But a touchdown in and of itself? That’s always worth 6 points.

How is a touchdown scored in the first place? Good question!

A touchdown is scored when one team gets the football into the other team’s end zone. If the football is entering the end zone by a running player, the football has to cross the goal line and be inside of the pylons to count as a touchdown.

(Goal Line? Pylon? Say what? Check out this post.)

If the football is being caught in the end zone by a receiver, the receiver must have two feet down in-bounds and have full control of the ball for it to count as a touchdown.

There are other ways to score, but the touchdown is the king of them all.

Wait…What Just Happened : Touchdown?

If you are trying to learn what constitutes a legal touchdown, the final scoring play of the Chargers/Broncos game was probably less than helpful.

Chargers WR Danario Alexander caught the ball on the 3 yard line and made an excellent effort to dive into the end zone, which he did. But while he was in the process of falling into the end zone, he lost control of the football on the ground before recovering possession again at the end of the play.

Now, in games past, this has been ruled as an incomplete pass. It’s weird, but so are a lot of things about the NFL. We just go with it. As per the NFL rule book,

If a player goes to the ground in the act of catching a pass (with or without contact by an opponent), he must maintain control of the ball throughout the process of contacting the ground, whether in the field of play or the end zone. If he loses control of the ball, and the ball touches the ground before he regains control, the pass is incomplete. If he regains control prior to the ball touching the ground, the pass is complete.

Since the ball touched the ground on this play, it should have been ruled an incomplete pass. Since this play was reviewed after the fact and the commentators explained the rule and Twitter erupted in “No TD” tweets and the coaches and players on the Chargers sideline all looked dejected knew the original TD call was going to be called back…it even more so should have been ruled an incomplete pass. And yet, the ruling on the field stands: touchdown.

Sometimes, there are no explanations.