When Defenses Lose Their Point (One-Point Safeties)
When Defenses Lose Their Point (One-Point Safeties)
There's a string of social media posts working their way around the site previously known as Twitter concerning the oddest opponents various college teams have faced in the past. Most of the odd opponents are athletic clubs and military teams the colleges played in the years well before our current scoring rules existed. To add to the discussion, I posted a chart I created for How Football Became Football that lists the changes in point values since the adoption of points-based scoring in 1883. Before 1883, teams won by games scoring goals or "safety touchdown" equivalencies than their opponents.
Posting the chart led to questions about the column on the far right concerning one-point safeties, so I thought it would be fun to look at how that scoring opportunity came about and why they are nearly as rare as the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, and Minnesota Vikings Super Bowls wins.
While Canada has long had the rouge or single, which is one-point safetyish, our one-point safety did not arrive until 1958 when we added the two-point conversion after the touchdown, thanks mainly to Fritz Crisler's belief that the kicked extra point was the most boring play in football.
A spurt of publicity appeared when the one-point safety became a possibility, but it took a while for one to happen. The Delaware football coach/AD and rules committee member Dave Nelson pointed out the possibility in one of his syndicated quizzes of the era.
Using various searches and the Wiki page concerning safeties, I found eleven one-point safeties to date and categorized them based on how they occurred:
Defensive penalty in the end zone.
Defense blocks the kick, recovers, and provides the impetus for the ball to enter the end zone before a defender gets tackled in the end zone.
Defensive interception and impetus.
Defensive fumble recovery and impetus.
Defensive Penalty in End Zone
The first one-point safety in NCAA or NAIA football came in 1971 when Syracuse earned a touchdown against Indiana. The Orange attempted to kick an extra point, but the ball popped into the air and into the arms of an Indiana defender. Defenders touching the kicked ball on a fly in the end zone was illegal then, resulting in a safety.
North Texas blocked a Nevada kick in 1991 and followed the block with an illegal forward pass from the end zone, adding one point to the 71 others they gave up that day.
Wesley earned an end zone penalty for batting the ball against Salisbury State in 1993, marking the second one-pointer due to penalty.
Kick Block, Defensive Recovery, and Impetus
These are the most common form of one-point safeties, though there are variations on how this occurs. Generally, the punt is blocked, a defender recovers the ball near the goal line and, in trying to avoid tacklers, retreats behind the goal line and is tackled.
Other defenders recover the blocked kick and lateral the ball to a teammate behind them, hoping the teammate can avoid tacklers. Sometimes, the teammates do not, and they give up a point.
DePauw was the first team to benefit from this style, followed by Morningside, Hamline, Texas, Oregon, Bluffton, and Emory and Henry.
Interception and Impetus
An uncommon one-point safety occurs following a pass interception in the field of play before being fumbled and recovered by a teammate behind the goal line. The only instance of this occurring came when the Westminster holder on a PAT attempt bobbled the snap and then threw an interception. Hilarity ensued as West Liberty fumbled the ball and then committed the one-point safety.
Fumble Recovery and Impetus
A potential one-point safety would start with the offensive team rushing the ball on a called run or bobbled snap. The offense then fumbles the ball, and the defense recovers it on the field of play. The defense then causes the ball to enter the end zone, where one of them is tackled in possession. Although this scenario seems likely, it has yet to happen, so we eagerly await the first team willing to perform this trick.
And, for those who did not keep track of the one-point safeties mentioned above, here's a list of those I came across.
Also, it is worth noting that none of the one-point safety games to date has ended in a tie or one-point differential, so 65 years after taking effect, the rule has yet to determine the outcome of a game.
Below are noncurated YouTube videos showing examples of one-point safeties. Beware that the production crew handling the Texas-Texas A&M game had no idea what was happening.
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The 1971 Syracuse safety happened when the kick was high and short, and an Indiana player illegally batted the ball in the end zone before it hit the ground. In 1974, the rules were changed to adopt the '3 and 1' system of penalty enforcement. That change made it much harder to score a safety by penalty, and I believe in the Syracuse case as well as David Nelson's newspaper example, under the 1974 and later rules, the try would have been replayed after a half-the-distance penalty. Also, I believe it was the rule in 1971 that the try ended "when it becomes certain that a scrimmage kick on a Try will not score the point". So, the refs must have thought the kick still had a chance of scoring when it was batted. In essence, the refs called 'goaltending' and awarded the score, just like basketball!
I was in a hotel bar when Texas one point safety happened and I’m proud to say I correctly announced the outcome before it was sorted. I was there on break from speaking to a group of college umpires. After it was grasped by everyone what had happened which was fairly quickly because several also officiated football one of the umpires loudly declared “I don’t ever want to hear dropped third strike or the infield fly rule is complicated after seeing that sheee-it”