NFL - Instant Replay for Pass Interference

This is, or was, a proposed rule change to the kickoff, which takes place at the opening of the first and third quarters and after a team scores. During the kickoff, once the ball travels ten yards, the kicking team can recover the ball and keep possession. An onside kick is a play designed specifically for the kicking team to recover the ball. This almost always takes place at the end of the game when the kicking team is losing and does not have time to stop the opposing offense (but on rare occasions it will happen at a random point - the most famous example being the New Orleans Saits' successful onside kick to start the third quarter of the 2010 Super Bowl). It has always been a very difficult play, but recent saftey changes to the rules have made it almost impossible.

I believe you are confusing this with a punt, which a team can elect to do at any point when they have posession of the ball. A punt will usually take place on fourth down when the team is outside scoring range and doesn't want to risk giving the opponent good field position.

Hope that helps!

Say team A is down by 10 points, with 2 minutes left on the clock. They score a touchdown, worth 6 points, and then they have the option of kicking an extra point, worth 1 point, or going for a 2-point conversion, worth (surprisingly enough) 2 points.

So now they're down by 2, 3, or 4 points, depending on how the extra point or conversion turned out. By rule, since they just scored, they kick the ball off and team B takes possession of it. In the normal flow of the game, the goal of a kickoff like that is generally to kick it as far as possible towards team B, so that they start deep in their own territory and have to advance the ball across the entire field in order to score.

But, since team B is ahead, and it's so close to the end of the game, once they take possession they can just run out the clock and win. Clock management in the NFL gets very complicated, but as a general rule, the 40-second play clock means the team in control of the ball can run 40 seconds off the game clock every play, if they choose to. So if team B gets the ball back with say 1:30 left, they can easily run off the remainder of the game clock and win. (I'm oversimplifying this with regard to timeouts, run vs pass plays, incomplete passes, and running out-of-bounds vs. getting tackled in-bounds...)

So for team A, kicking off the ball with only a minute or two left, their last-ditch strategy is to recover the ball during the kickoff, instead of letting team B take possession. The "usual" way to do this is called on onside kick. By rule, the ball has to travel at least 10 yards on a kickoff. For an onside kick, instead of kicking it as deep as possible, you try to kick it 10 yards but no more, and try to spin or bounce the ball in such a way that team B will touch the ball but then drop it, which would allow team A to recover it. On a kickoff, team B has to touch the ball first - team A can't simply kick it up in the air and to themselves - but if team B touches it and then drops or fumbles it, team A can recover it and take possession.

So, that's an onside kick. High-risk, because if it doesn't work, team B takes possession around midfield and has a much better shot at scoring than they would if they were deep in their own territory. But in this scenario, team B wins almost automatically if they take possession, no matter where on the field, so trying the onside kick is worth it for team A.

Recent NFL rule changes around kickoffs have made a successful onside kick go from "really difficult" to "nearly impossible". In particular, players on team A used to be able to get a running start at the kickoff, now they have to remain still until the ball is kicked.

Because of that rule change, onside kicks almost don't matter anymore. So that proposal would have created a different option for team A - instead of having to recover the onside kick, their last ditch "do or die" play is converting a 4th and 15 (going 15 yards at least on a single play).

The point is to avoid and be able to correct obvious mistakes, which have and still do happen. Refs are human and the game at field level happens extremely fast.