A College Football Player Called For A Fair Catch On His Own 1

It is a phrase that every single football coach is contractually required to say at some point: special teams are a third of the game. There are so many examples over the years of football games that have been decided by someone doing something extremely good or extremely bad on special teams, and while offenses and defenses tend to get most of the attention, game-changing plays on special teams tend to stick with you a little more than most — unless you are an Alabama fan, you can see an example of that right here.

Anyway, Abilene Christian entered Saturday’s game against Missouri needing just about everything to go right to pull off an upset, as the Wildcats, an FCS squad, walked into SEC country as 31.5-point underdogs. Instead, they got one of the more perplexing special teams decisions you will ever see, as wide receiver and return man Kendall Catalon opted to call for a fair catch instead of letting the ball bounce into the end zone.

The catch: Catalon did not exactly have a ton of space behind him, as he caught the ball while his heels were more or less on the very edge of the end zone.

My assumption here is that he thought he was catching it in the end zone. Still, just let it bounce into the end zone next time.