What Happens If A Punt Hits The Scoreboard?

What Happens If A Punt Hits The Scoreboard?

What happens if a punt hits the scoreboard? I know that’s exactly what you’re here to find out. Thank you to Google for sending you our way. I’ll break this down as quickly as I possibly can so that you can enjoy the rest of your day.

Per the NFL rulebook, scoreboards and guide wires count as ‘foreign objects’. If a loose ball were to hit one of these foreign objects, the play is dead. All that happens is you go back to the original spot and replay the down. The clock also resets like the play never happened.

“If it is determined that the ball hit an object, the down will be replayed from the previous spot, and the game clock will be reset to the time when the ball was snapped and will start on the snap.”

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There you go. That’s basically the jist of it. The NFL gives you a mulligan if you hit the scoreboard. Try again on the next play. That’s all it is.

I bring this up because it happens more often than you think. It happened in both games that were played in Germany this year.

After a punt hits the scoreboard in Germany, where is Pat McAfee when you need him?

Rich Eisen: "I guess that moment's for McAfee, right?"

Dan Orlovsky: "McAfee could never." pic.twitter.com/Liqvb7vqzN

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 5, 2023

Bill Belichick recently spoke about this after this happened to his team.

“That’s actually something that has come up in a couple of our games before, where the ball has hit an object – whether it’s a scoreboard, or it could be the wire that the camera goes on or something like that, and you just replay the play,” he said. “That’s all covered. We’ll see whether that happens or not, but I don’t think it’s really that big of a factor for us. If the kicker or punter hits it, then we’ll re-play the play.”

The Cowboys also have a large scoreboard at home that gets hit pretty frequently.

Only at JerryWorld…

The punt hits the scoreboard 👀pic.twitter.com/Yu6pbJIIRQ

— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) January 16, 2022

It’s just a mulligan. Try again. Pretty much all you need to know. It is what it is. I’m not sure what else you can possibly do about it. Enjoy the rest of your day and thank you for reading.

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