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CLICK HERE to Register for a free account and login for a smoother ad-free experience. It's easy, and only takes a few moments.My opinion why no onside kick: to have a chance at recovering the kick it has to be kicked diagonally, not straight ahead. But if you kick it diagonally then the chances of it going out of bounds go up dramatically. And then the ball would come back out to the 40, amazingly enough 5 yards backwards of where they were kicking from.
The penalty for a kickoff out of bounds is not "the ball goes to the 40". It's either 30 yards from the spot of the kick or where the ball goes out of bounds. So there was no fear of the ball going out to the forty if they try an onside kick.
Surprise onside kick!
They were talking about this on WEEI. The only thing I'm not sure about is whether a kickoff out of bounds is considered a penalty which the receiving team can decline and make them kick over of whether they have to take it. If it's the latter it's an oversight that Belichick won't let slip by again.
So then...suppose they purposely kicked it out of bounds, aiming toward the coffin corner? It shouldn't be too hard to kick of OOB more than 15 yards, and the Ravens' choices would be the spot or the 5-yd line (or, if allowed, forcing a re-kick which would run precious time off the clock.)
I guess you'd have to have practiced this to be confident in it, though, and who has time to practice the kicking-off-from-the-opponent's-35 scenario?
Surprise onside kick!
Surprise onside kick!
I wouldn't have done it. 45 seconds, 1 timeout, Baltimore against the wind, there was no need to risk it. Had there been 2 minutes and Baltimore had 3 timeouts then I probably would. There was no need to take a chance there IMO.I was thinking the same thing, although a little risky the reward is HUGE!