Tater

September 13th, 2016 at 2:25 PM ^

I don't think this would work at higher levels becuase coaches would tell their players to jump out of the way.  Anyone on a college kickoff team has good enough reflexes to do that.

Muttley

September 13th, 2016 at 2:56 PM ^

If memory serves, that may have been by accident.  It was the NC game.

Anyway, for those saying college players have better reflexes, consider also that college kickers have stronger legs.  That HS kick seemed fairly weak for what he was trying to do.

And if the downside is that it turns into a powerful squib kick, then that's not so bad if it's not a do-or-die situation.

Evil Empire

September 13th, 2016 at 4:46 PM ^

I was hit in the right eye with a soccer ball twice in my tween years.  Considering how rarely I played soccer this defied the odd like crazy. 

I felt I could detect a difference in my eyes' appearance for a few years...the right one looked like the opening was smaller.

Lampuki22

September 13th, 2016 at 3:50 PM ^

I kicked pee week through HS .

To kick a ball off a tee (standing upright per a kick away) with any kind of accruacy let alone hit a kid might be too hard. I think this guy got lucky.  But if it were sideways it would be easier, more like kicking a soccer ball with accurace because you could better control the height. Might work at equal too or higher rate than a regular onside kick. 

I always wanted to put the ball sideways on the tee and just flick it high in the air and try to catch.  Coaches always said that was illegal but I have never seen a rule against it. 

Wolfman

September 13th, 2016 at 4:07 PM ^

it's a rule that has been put in place since I played; granted, decades ago. We used two forms of onside kicks, both quite successful. One was the watermelon ball that you're are talking about, where the ball would just be placed flat on the tee's sufrace which, of course, resulted in a kunckleball flight. The other was with the ball placed in the conventional manner but the player standing beside the kicker would kick from the side, causing a higher trajectory that would travel between 10 and 15 yds. This is useful at the high school level because very few - as in none - of the front line receiving team would ever call a fair catch and if they tried to catcch it would normally lose possession on the ensuing full speed collision. 

I am sure today - the coaches don't miss much - the players are much better trained for these situations. 

FolkstyleCoach

September 13th, 2016 at 7:10 PM ^

I had a coach who was skilled enough to do that when we practiced kick returns. If he noticed someone in the front turning too early, the next play it was going right off that kids back. Looking back it was an effective technique but I'm not so sure about our coaches intent...




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Ali G Bomaye

September 14th, 2016 at 11:03 AM ^

When I played in high school, the opposing team's kicker once kicked a line drive that went off the knee of one of our front line players and rebounded deep into the kicking team's own territory. Since virtually their entire team had run past it, one of our guys was able to recover on about their 20, almost as if we'd had a really long kick return.

m9tt

September 14th, 2016 at 3:27 PM ^

I don't understand why more coaches instruct their kickers to do something similar when kicking off at midfield after a penalty.  

It's not really that difficult to strike a football off a tee and kick it very hard at about head height (UCF's kicker did it twice last weekend), similar to shooting a soccer ball (with the laces of your boot). You don't even really need to kick it directly off the opposing player... you're hoping that one of the upmen stick out an arm or attempt to catch the knuckling football.  Any sort of deflected touch and it's chaos.   If they don't touch it, the returner has to field the kick by attempting judge the bounce of a hard-kicked football with an odd rotation. 

The worst case scenario is that the ball goes out of bounds without a touch, or the ball is blasted into the endzone on a line.