No Dolphins Kickoff in a Game

[CraigRye]

Hi Everyone,

Just wondering if this has happened before or if there is a reason for it but when I have been looking through the Dolphins gamebooks there appears to have been a strange occurrence in one of their AFL games.

It is the 1967 game against the Kansas City Chiefs on 8-Oct-1967 at KC. The Dolphins were beaten 41-0 and KC appear to have kicked off the 1st and 2nd halves. Therefore Miami did not kick-off once.

Cheers
Craig

[Todd Pence]

It's a completely fictional game, but in Dan Jenkins' SEMI-TOUGH, in the Super Bowl game, the Jets inexplicably kick off to the Giants at the beginning of both halves.

[TodMaher]

Hi Everyone,

Just wondering if this has happened before or if there is a reason for it but when I have been looking through the Dolphins gamebooks there appears to have been a strange occurrence in one of their AFL games.

It is the 1967 game against the Kansas City Chiefs on 8-Oct-1967 at KC. The Dolphins were beaten 41-0 and KC appear to have kicked off the 1st and 2nd halves. Therefore Miami did not kick-off once.

Cheers
Craig

The team winning the coin toss has the choice to kick or receive at the start of the game. The team losing the coin toss has the choice at the start if the second half. The first rarely happens due to playing conditions (weather). The second very rarely happens - usually in blowouts, but in this game the weather (rain) was the apparently the reason for the Dolphins not kicking off.

[JuggernautJ]

The team winning the coin toss has the choice to kick or receive at the start of the game. The team losing the coin toss has the choice at the start if the second half. The first rarely happens due to playing conditions (weather). The second very rarely happens - usually in blowouts, but in this game the weather (rain) was the apparently the reason for the Dolphins not kicking off.

I thought this was the case, too.
But doesn't it go even further in that the "choice" involves which side of the field to defend?
So that if the team that wins the initial toss chooses to defend a goal (perhaps for weather reasons) and the other team chooses to receive the kick the second team would also have first choice (and could choose to receive again) to begin the second half?

[rhickok1109]

The team winning the coin toss has the choice to kick or receive at the start of the game. The team losing the coin toss has the choice at the start if the second half. The first rarely happens due to playing conditions (weather). The second very rarely happens - usually in blowouts, but in this game the weather (rain) was the apparently the reason for the Dolphins not kicking off.

I thought this was the case, too.
But doesn't it go even further in that the "choice" involves which side of the field to defend?
So that if the team that wins the initial toss chooses to defend a goal (perhaps for weather reasons) and the other team chooses to receive the kick the second team would also have first choice (and could choose to receive again) to begin the second half?

I'm sure many will recall the 1962 AFL championship game, when Dallas co-captain Abner Haynes was instructed by Coach Hank Stram to choose the end of the field facing the clock if he won the toss to start OT. Dallas did win the toss but Haynes told the ref, "We'll kick to the clock." IOW, he chose to kick off and Houston got to choose which goal to defend. As it happened, no one scored in the first OT and Dallas won on a field goal in the second OT.

[Throwin_Samoan]

I thought this was the case, too.
But doesn't it go even further in that the "choice" involves which side of the field to defend?
So that if the team that wins the initial toss chooses to defend a goal (perhaps for weather reasons) and the other team chooses to receive the kick the second team would also have first choice (and could choose to receive again) to begin the second half?

Indeed.

Rule 4, Article 2, Section 1: "The winner of the toss must choose one of two privileges and the loser is given the other. The two privileges are:
( a ) which team is to receive; or
( b ) the goal his team is to defend."

"For the second half, the captain who lost the pregame toss is to have the first choice of the two privileges listed in ( a ) or ( b )."

Choose wisely.

[CraigRye]

Thanks everyone, that's that mystery solved for me. Can this situation still happen then?

[BD Sullivan]

Another seeming oddity in this game was the fact that Len Dawson played the entire game--with the game never really in question. The explanation came about an hour after the game, when Pete Beathard was sent to the Oilers in exchange for a first-rounder and Ernie Ladd.

[RyanChristiansen]

I'm glad I ran across this thread. I was recently looking at statistics in newspapers for some old college games and when I saw that one team didn't have any kickoff returns, I thought maybe they were all touchbacks or out of bounds, but now I can see they might not have been given the opportunity to return at all.

[Throwin_Samoan]

Thanks everyone, that's that mystery solved for me. Can this situation still happen then?

It could. It seems unlikely.