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The fair catch kick is a rule at the professional and high school levels of American football that allows a team that has just made a fair catch to attempt a free kick [A] from the spot of the catch. The kick must be either a place kick or a drop kick , and if it passes over the crossbar and between the goalposts of the opposing team's goal, a ...
Chargers' Cameron Dicker made a rare fair-catch free-kick field goal from 57 yards out, the longest in NFL history. Only seven free kicks have been successful in the league.
Fair-catch free kick rule. Here's the exact wording of the NFL's rule on fair catches, from Rule 10, Section 2, Article 4: "After a fair catch is made or is awarded as the result of fair catch ...
NCAA rules on fair catches are similar to NFL and NFHS rules, except it does not have the fair catch kick option, and a fair catch from a kickoff that is caught between the receiving team's goal line and its 25-yard line is a touchback. The NCAA abolished the fair catch in 1950 but reinstated it in 1951 without the fair catch kick option.
Ray Wersching of the then-San Diego Chargers was the last kicker to make a fair catch free kick, all the way back in 1976. There hadn't even been one attempted since Joey Slye of the Carolina ...
The seldom-used rule allows a team that has just made a fair catch to try a free kick for three points. The kick is attempted from the line of scrimmage, and the defenders all must stand 10 yards away. The play hardly ever happens because teams almost never find themselves in circumstances to make such a kick feasible.
Only five NFL teams had previously tried the kick in the 21st century, and nobody had successfully executed it since Ray Wersching did it for the San Diego Chargers 48 years ago. Dicker's 57-yarder also was the longest fair-catch kick in NFL history, besting Paul Hornung's 52-yarder for Green Bay in 1964.
Although the 1848 "Cambridge rules" described by Henry C. Malden in 1897 have not survived, Malden implies that they awarded a free kick for a fair catch. [26] The 1856 Cambridge rules, which do survive, explicitly awarded such a free kick: [27] When a player catches the ball directly from the foot, he may kick it as he can without running with it.