Everything you need to know about the fair catch kick, football's vestigial tailbone

Thursday night, the Chargers made history by converting on a play that hadn't been successful in FORTY EIGHT YEARS

It happened. IT HAPPENED. It really happened! It’s a slightly-before-Christmas football miracle!

On Thursday night, Cameron Dicker of the Chargers scored on a fair catch kick, an ancient rugby play buried deep within the football rulebook. There had only been 27 fair catch kicks in the entire 100-plus year history of the NFL, and most happened in the archaic era before “television” or “offense” had been invented. The last successful attempt before Thursday night was in 1976, 48 years ago.

The Chargers’ opponents seemed surprised by the fair catch kick, as did the game’s announcers. But Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh had been waiting for this moment. He was responsible for one of the only modern-era fair catch kick attempts–a failed 71-yard attempt by Phil Dawson in 2013 when he was head coach of the 49ers—and after the game called it “his favorite play.” Dicker said postgame that the Chargers’ special teams coach, Ryan Ficken, makes the team watch the most recent fair catch kick attempt, a 60-yard miss by Joey Slye in 2019, every week. (Here’s that kick in case you want to watch it every week too.) The kick was only worth three points, but the Chargers outscored the Broncos 21-6 from that point on and won—I think Denver was distraught after realizing their opponents knew more obscure special teams scenarios than they did.

I, too, had been waiting on this moment. I am extremely passionate about football oddities, and have been logging online to yell FAIR CATCH KICK in the extremely rare scenarios when a fair catch kick is plausible since at least 2017. The last time someone attempted one, I devoted 700 words in a column hypothetically supposed to be about everything that happened on a Sunday to analyzing this one weird play. I also remember drunkenly explaining the concept to the five-ish people left at the end of a Super Bowl party in 2013 hosted by someone who clearly expected most guests to leave after the Beyoncé performance. (She was thrilled to learn about all the obscure special teams ramifications when the Ravens lined up for a safety kick at 11:45 p.m.)

So here’s a post almost 50 years in the making, the post I’ve been waiting to write for years. Let me tell you about the fair catch kick.

What is a fair catch kick?

When a team calls for a fair catch on a kick or punt, the NFL rulebook gives them two options on what to do next:

1. They can start a possession on offense with a fresh set of downs.

2. They can attempt a fair catch kick—essentially, a field goal, worth three points and everything. But it’s governed by a particular set of rules that make it a lot easier than a standard field goal.

You probably didn’t know about the second option. That’s because 99.999 percent of the time, the correct option here is No. 1. 99.999 percent is not even an exaggeration. There are probably about 10,000 fair catches for every one fair catch kick.

The big difference between a standard field goal and a fair catch kick is that the fair catch kick is attempted out of a free kick formation, like a kickoff. That provides several huge advantages. There’s no snap, and snaps can go wrong. The hold is always going to be perfect. The ball is placed at the yard-line where the fair catch was made, instead of 7-ish yards behind the line of scrimmage, which makes it harder. And the defense has to stand at least 10 yards away from the kicker and can’t move until the ball is kicked, making a block nearly impossible¹.

It looks weird. But it counts just the same as a regular field goal.

Why would you ever attempt a fair catch kick?

Like I said, it’s almost always better to take the ball on offense—option #1. If you take the ball on offense, you could score a touchdown. Heck, you might even get closer to the end zone and have a better chance at kicking a field goal than if you just kick one as soon as you get the ball!

But there’s exactly one scenario to go fair catch kick:

• There’s almost no time left in a half. Just enough for one play. (Or, no time left in a half—the rulebook allows teams to extend the half for a fair catch kick.)

• One team is punting… and the punt is pretty bad. It’s short, staying within 50 or 60 yards of the end zone. And it stays inbounds. And it goes high enough in the air that the receiver catches it before it hits the ground.

• Obviously, the returner has to signal for a fair catch. And with little to no time remaining in a half, they often won’t—a punt return TD might seem like a better opportunity.

• If it’s the fourth quarter, the receiving team will only want to do the fair catch kick if they’re trailing by three or fewer points. Otherwise, a Hail Mary and a potential touchdown is smarter.

And on top of all that, you need a coach who knows about the fair catch kick, and is thinking about it amidst the billion other things happening in their head during a football game.

The Chargers were able to pull it off Thursday night because the Broncos committed fair catch interference. The punt was far enough that a fair catch kick would’ve been nearly impossible—72 yards, at first. But the 15-yard penalty made it a 57-yarder—very doable. I’d like to thank the Broncos player who committed that penalty for making all my dreams come true.

Why is this a part of football?

In the headline, I called the fair catch kick football’s vestigial tailbone. (I debated going with “Coccyx Kick” but the rhyme wasn’t worth making you all think about the word “coccyx.”)

In the same way our tailbone is this weird little nubbin that shows our species shares an evolutionary link with animals that have tails, the fair catch kick is a weird little caveat buried deep within the NFL rulebook that tells a story about our sport’s past.

American football is descended from rugby. It’s in an evolutionary family with a bunch of other “footballs” around the globe—Gaelic football, Australian Rules football, and so on and so forth². In rugby, there used to be a play called the goal-from-mark, where a player could signal for a “mark”—essentially a fair catch—and kick at the uprights unimpeded from wherever they caught the ball. But they knocked that out of the rulebook 50-odd years ago.

However, if you watch our sport’s Australian cousin, you’ll see the living, breathing equivalent of the fair catch kick on almost every play³. In Aussie rules, whenever a player catches a ball that’s been kicked a certain distance, they’re awarded a mark. Play stops and everybody backs off. The player who takes the mark has two choices: immediately restart play, or attempt to score a goal from the spot of the mark.

Here’s a highlight reel of great marks⁴. Unlike our fair catches, they’re heavily contested catches—great stuff, tbh. The highlight reel cuts off right after each catch, but sometimes, you can see what happens next: When the guy who takes a mark is far from the uprights, they’ll pop up and kick the ball to their closest teammate—essentially, restarting the offense. But if they’re close enough, the mark turns into a goal-scoring opportunity. They take a deep breath, start backing up, and prepare to kick the ball between the uprights.

The fair catch kick operates under the same rules, more or less. You’re either going to restart play (by going on offense, first and ten) or try to score a “goal” (the fair catch kick.) But in our game, the incentives are different. Both sports have Option #1 and Option #2—but in their sport, Option #2 is much more valuable, since their whole game is built around trying to manufacture looks at the goal. In our sport, the field goal isn’t particularly important and we always go for Option #1.

Why have I never seen a fair catch kick before?

As previously noted, there’s basically only one scenario in which you’d ever want a fair catch kick. But three big changes to football made fair catch kicks highly unlikely.

1. Punters are awesome now. (Amazingly, this is also related to Australian rules football.) They’re kicking the ball higher, longer, and more accurately than ever. And as punters have gotten better, the likelihood that a fair catch is ever made in the range where a kicker can make a fair catch kick gets lower. If they need to hit a late-game punt that hangs in the air five seconds and dips out of bounds as the clock expires, they can do that.

2. In 1974, the NFL moved the goal post from the goal line to the back of the end zone. So in the 1960s, when a player made a fair catch at the 50-yard line, their kicker would have a 50-yard fair catch kick. Now, a fair catch at that same spot leads to a 60-yard fair catch kick. In the decade before 1974, there were 11 fair catch kick attempts, including three makes. There have only been 11 since the uprights were moved.

3. In 1950, college football eliminated the fair catch kick. With more games, worse punters, and the general aura of nonsense that exists in college football, you’d expect to see fair catch kicks more in that version of the sport. Instead, we can only get it in the pros, and it never happens.

When did this ever make sense? Picture you’re watching a football game 100 years ago.

The year is 1924. Everything is in black-and-white, because they hadn’t invented color yet. The No. 1 food is “creamed flour,” and the hottest song in the streets is “Jesus Christ I Wish Alcohol Was Legal Again” by Silly Millie and the Ragtime Six. All things considered, it seems pretty fun to go stand outside in a suit and tie for three hours in November in Pennsylvania to watch a game between the Dayton Triangles and the Pottsville Maroons⁵.

Back then, our sport wasn’t particularly far along in the evolutionary process. Most plays were just 22 guys running into each other. But something exciting is happening. The ball is soaring into the air. It’s another punt by the opposing team’s star quarterback, whose name is Dutch or Curly or something like that—his 11th punt of the day. His powerful leg has made him famous all the way from Kenosha to Harrisburg, earning him a hefty $900 contract. That’ll buy him a lot of creamed flour! But this punt doesn’t go particularly far, because its 1924 and everybody sucks at everything, even Curly Dutch and his $900 leg.

Your team gets a fair catch at the 37-yard line. Holy crap! That gives them a free shot at the uprights from just 37 yards away! It’s the best chance they’ll get all day. They run out for a fair catch kick by your team’s star kicker, whose name is Cal or Fritz or something like that. And he drills it! Incredible! The Maroons win 3-0! They’re going to drink all the NON ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES in Pottsville tonight!

You might think this was a joke description. But look at what happened on November 8, 1925. The Green Bay Packers played the Chicago Cardinals at Comiskey Park. The details are a bit shaky, but here’s what we know: The game was 0-0 entering the fourth quarter, and with Green Bay up 3-0, the Packers made a fair catch at the 35-yard line… and just went straight to the fair catch kick. A kick right at that spot. The game wasn’t even in the closing seconds. It just made sense to kick. They missed, but it made sense at the time.

Now flash back to the present day.

It’s 2024 again. We have invented all the colors—yellow, red, green, it’s awesome. We’ve come up with all sorts of food flavors which the 1924 mind could not comprehend, and computers, too. Hold on, I’m gonna go chug a beer because that’s legal.

OK, back.

There are a million reasons why a fair catch kick should never happen—but it all clicked in one special moment on Thursday night: A mediocre punt. A fortuitous penalty. A weirdo coach who says 1924 things like “eating chicken breeds weak men” and “yes, waiter, I would like a glass of whole milk with my dinner.”

That kick sent the Broncos to hell, and sent anybody watching through a wormhole that allowed us to see football from different eras and different continents. It was a glimpse at how our weird, beautiful game got so weird and beautiful. I’ll cherish it until the next successful fair catch kick in 2070.

1. On the broadcast last night, rules analyst Terry McAulay said the non-kicking team was straight-up not allowed to block the fair catch kick. I truly don’t see any reason why that would be the case, but on the last few fair catch kicks, the receiving team has not made any attempt to block the kick. And McAulay was nails about every other aspect of this rare process last night, so maybe he’s right.

2. I initially wrote that all these sports were descended from rugby, leading to several replies from Irish readers that Gaelic football is absolutely not descended from rugby, so I changed it. Apologies to Ireland.

3. I think marks are also possible in Gaelic football, but in the few matches I’ve watched I don’t know if I’ve seen one. Tough to tell. I will ask Paul Mescal or, more realistically, my wife’s cousins from Kerry.

4. Here’s another.

5. Actual 1920s team names. I made up the song, though.