The Draw Play

Something has been eating away at me for a few years.

Why don’t teams ever try beaning dudes with a hard line drive on onside kicks?

An onside kick is a desperation play by teams who are trying to earn a new possession without having to waste time playing defense. The play is essentially an allowed attempt to exploit the rulebook. If the ball goes ten yards, the kicking team can recover it. The usual play is to kick a weird bouncey kick and hope the chaos caused by an oblong egg-shaped ball causes the other team to fail to recover it. If successful, the kicking team goes right back on offense. The disadvantage is obvious: the receiving team gets the ball in excellent field position, usually just outside field goal range. This is why you only see onside kicks late in games by trailing teams running out of time to score. It’s almost the football equivalent of how losing hockey teams will abandon the net to stick an extra guy on offense. They are already losing, so the risk is deemed worthwhile, because it’s gonna be over for them soon anyway.

It was also a very rare but occasional surprise attack until last season. The Saints notably pulled it off beautifully in the Super Bowl to start the second half, shocking the Colts and earning a free possession. Regretably, this is no longer possible. The new kicking rules that went into effect last year now require teams to announce the intention of an onside kick, and they were only allowed by a trailing team in the 4th quarter. Booo. I read the NFL is looking to open it back up to the entire game, which is better. Announcing it seems like a necessary evil with how players have to line up under the new dynamic kickoff rules, but it should be allowed by either team, at any time.

But enough about that. Onside kicks are low-percentage plays. Extremely low percentage. NFL teams seem to go with the strategy of trying to make the ball go just past the ten-yard barrier for recovery chances, but in pretty much every case it doesn’t matter because the receiving team will have a couple of handsy guys aiming purely to recover it. Kickers try this via little weeny squib kicks or bounce kicks. Sometimes the kicking team gets the luck of the draw and the ball does a weird stupid hop off a receiving guy who wasn’t ready for it. That seems to be the best way to succeed at an onside kick. Have it contact a player, and collect the bounce.

Which finally brings me all the way back to my original question. WHY NOT HOWITZER THAT FUCKER DIRECTLY AT THE FATTEST GUY ON THE OTHER TEAM?

These weeny little baby doinks give the opposing team a lot of time to react and even block for the guy trying to recover. Why give them that chance? BEAN ‘EM. Look for the fattest, biggest, least handsy guy on the opposing unit (or look for a close cluster of guys) and fucking missile that shit right into his torso? It’s hard to recover a line drive. It’s hard to dodge a torpedo. You successfully hit a guy at that range and the chances he catches it are pretty much nil. You are already counting on the chaos of a weird bounce, why not cause the chaos yourself? Be the chaos you wish to see in the world.

I know this can work, because Oregon already did it.

The obvious disadvantage here is kicking it hard and fast gives your guys less time to get to the ball, something the floaty derp kicks allow. The other disadvantage is that it is probably pretty hard to aim a kick well enough to actually hit someone. The good thing I see about this is that if you miss someone with a fastball, the ball goes way farther upfield, is likely still a weird squib kick that someone might fumble or not return well, and the recovering team won’t get as good field position. If you start using the torpedo kick approach, you could actually put receiving teams in a bind. If they cluster their players at the 10 yard marker, that makes them an easier target for beaning. If they decide to spread people out to avoid the beaning risks, that opens the field for a surprise dinky kick to face fewer obstacles. Suddenly to bean or dink is a strategy.

It’s an incredibly low percentage play either way that will only be tried by teams in desperate scenarios. I don’t see why some teams don’t say fuck it and give the missile a try. If you barely have a chance at success, why not make those assholes play dodgeball? If one team can pull it off, it opens the door to a league-wide beaning marathon.

Make it happen. I need this. It would be extremely entertaining. We could rate kickers on their beaning accuracy. Yeah, he’s missed 4 of 10 field goals from beyond 47 yards, but his onside missile strike rate is .42. That’s a weapon.