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At the end of the first half of Panthers-Bucs on Sunday morning, we saw a strange play that had NFL nerds celebrating and a bunch of the rest of us a little bit confused.

So let’s get un-confused. Let’s get fused.

After a pretty disastrous drive at the close of the first half, the Buccaneers faced 4th and 35 from their own 11-yard line. They wisely decided to punt, which the Panthers then fair caught at the 50-yard line.

There was one second in the half remaining, so the Panthers decided to take a free kick.

So wait, what’s a free kick?

Good question. Glad you asked. A free kick is permitted under an old NFL rule that lets teams have two options once they call for a fair catch. They can either:

Just take the ball at the line of scrimmage and run a play, which happens the vast, vast majority of the time Take a free kick

The Panthers in this situation elected to take a free kick.

OK you didn’t really answer the question. What’s a free kick?

Right. Sorry. A free kick is sort of like a field goal, but not really. Players line up a bit more like a kickoff, where everyone on offense must be behind the line of scrimmage when the ball is kicked.

On defense, everyone must be ten yards back. Kickers can either elect to do a kick with a holder, or do a drop kick. The Panthers took a 50-yard kick with the holder, which was too bad, because a drop kick would’ve broken NFL Twitter.

Why don’t we see these more often?

There just aren’t a lot of situations in which they make sense. Most punts are long enough that a field goal would be difficult to execute off a fair catch, and there’s usually enough time on the clock after a punt to make offenses want to get the ball on first down.

You need a confluence of events to happen:

The punt being fair caught at a reasonable distance for a field goal kicker to make Very little time left on the clock

Those two things happened here, so we got a free kick.

Did it work?

Nope. Joey Slye missed the 60-yarder.

OH COME ON!!! We get a MAKEABLE Free Kick… and this is what happens? https://t.co/nVSXRoaoLF pic.twitter.com/6GhJ4rJeTw — Jake Donnelly (@JacobDonnelly31) October 13, 2019

Rats.

Rats is right.