What is the One-Point Safety in Football

In this edition of the Football Rules History  we chat about a very rare and unknown rule affectionately called the one point safety. We describe it and tell you how many times it has occurred int he NFL in this segment.

If ever there were a unicorn in the NFL football rules it would have to be the very odd one-point safety rule. What is that you may ask? Well according to the NFL's scoring rules under Section 11-3-2-C of the 2022 NFL rules, which says this in referencing a point after attempt: “If the Try results in what would ordinarily be a safety against either team, one point is awarded to the opponent.”

Okay there are a lot of Ifs on this, highly unlikely scenario.

The team attempting the try for two points (or botched one point kick attempt) must lose possession of the ball during the live ball play.
The Defensive team must gain possession and either be trying to actively trying to advance the ball out of the endzone or be in the field of play beyond their own goal line.
The ball has to become dead in the endzone after the defensive possession.

As we said it is highly unlikely that this will occur, but then again this is football and the prolate spheroid bounces in unpredictable ways, so to speak.

I guess the first question is has this ever occurred in the NFL? It is in the rule book.

At the time of this writing I could not find any instance of this rule 11-3-2-C ever being used in a league game but believe it or not it did get very close one game. It was a Monday Night Football game (Yes all the odd stuff seems to happen on MNF, LoL) in 2018 between the Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots.
The Patriots had just scored a touchdown with just under ten-minutes remaining to extend their lead to 18-6 over the Bills. Coach B decided to leave the offense on the field and go for a two-point conversion in an attempt to go up by 14 points. Tom Brady took a direct snap, dropped back and fired a pass over the middle in the end zone to an awaiting Cordarrelle Patterson. Bills linebacker Number 51, Julian Stanford stepped in the way and picked off the pass, and in traffic decided to try and take the ball out of the endzone. Before he got within a yard of the goal line though an alert Patriot punched the ball out of his arms and a mad scramble on the endzone paint ensued.

The website Fan Buzz later covered this story and shared that Buffalo recovered the ball. Had they not and either New England would have or the ball would have gone out of bounds in the endzone, a one-point safety would have been awarded as the dust could have been brushed off of NFL Rule 11-3-2-C. But alas Rule C must stay in its slumber.

The website Quirky research.com points to where a very similar collegiate rule of the one-point safety has been used in a couple of instances. A post on the site says, “ Before the 1988 season, the NCAA made a rule change, awarding college football teams two points for returning a failed extra point or two-point conversion. This happens occasionally (9 times in I-A football in 2005).”

As a matter of fact we found a video that has a whole slew of one pointers scored in this manner using the rule. Check these out:

So though it is weird and had not happened in the highest form of professional football, the guys at the collegiate level have found the cryptic phenomenon on occasion.

Banner photo is courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of 1919 football action in Pitt versus Penn State game - Pitt's Stein stopping Hess of State.

Special thanks to the source sites linked above.