Since Zuerlein's onside kick can only work once

Red Dragon said:

Zuerlein pulled off the trick perfectly, but it's only going to work once. From this point on, all Cowboys opponents are going to pounce on that ball before it goes 10 yards. They aren't going to stand and watch like the Falcons did.

So does he have to go back to performing normal traditional onside kicks from this point on?

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Sounds like they had a plan on if they had pounced on it to try to blow up the pouncer to knock the ball loose. I think we will see it again in the future. Hopefully it is not needed in the near future.

Red Dragon said:

Zuerlein pulled off the trick perfectly, but it's only going to work once. From this point on, all Cowboys opponents are going to pounce on that ball before it goes 10 yards. They aren't going to stand and watch like the Falcons did.

So does he have to go back to performing normal traditional onside kicks from this point on?

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Fact is most onside kicks do not work especially with the rule change of guys having to be at the line of scrimmage.

Good chance Zurlein has more than one kick from that setup.

MWH1967 said:

I say kick it hard and see if you can get it to bounce off someone...

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I always liked this approach. Drill it right at someone.

I’d say kicking it like he did [but harder] has a higher percentage of getting a recovery than onside kicking it off the tee. That spinning action is harder to recover than a soft bouncing football.

I don't really see why it couldn't work again?

Teams recover like 10% of onsides since the rule change, and this general approach has just as good a chance as any other.

Red Dragon said:

Zuerlein pulled off the trick perfectly, but it's only going to work once. From this point on, all Cowboys opponents are going to pounce on that ball before it goes 10 yards. They aren't going to stand and watch like the Falcons did.

So does he have to go back to performing normal traditional onside kicks from this point on?

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well not once because there are other ways to kick it but its not something you can pull out week week..they will use it when desperate

what if a player does go to jump on it and it gets pushed, kicked, shoved, bounces etc and is still up for grabs , happens on fumble drills all the time, shultz fumbled the ball and it was right in his had while on the ground and yet he didnt come uo with it..

to say only once and never again is something i wouldn't count on..crazy things happen in sports..

Red Dragon said:

Zuerlein pulled off the trick perfectly, but it's only going to work once. From this point on, all Cowboys opponents are going to pounce on that ball before it goes 10 yards. They aren't going to stand and watch like the Falcons did.

So does he have to go back to performing normal traditional onside kicks from this point on?

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Not true. The concept of the play is for the ball to roll slowly and for certain Cowboys players to block the opponent away from the ball until it goes 10 yards then for others to pounce on it.

Red Dragon said:

Zuerlein pulled off the trick perfectly, but it's only going to work once. From this point on, all Cowboys opponents are going to pounce on that ball before it goes 10 yards. They aren't going to stand and watch like the Falcons did.

So does he have to go back to performing normal traditional onside kicks from this point on?

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Nope. That voodoo spin will scare them and hypnotise them just as much each time he does it. They keep away from it for all the same reasons the Falcons did because it's "too skeery" to handle without a possible fumble and live ball.

I think you'll see this type of onside kick regularly the rest of the season. When they changed the rule requiring an equal number of players on each side of the kicker, it was done with player safety in mind, to avoid the massive pile of players crashing into each other with a 10 yard running start on onside kick attempts. (Even Moose Johnston, who played special teams throughout his career said the onside kick is the most violent play in football.) This type of kick, because the ball moves slower, allows more players to close on the ball and get involved in the play. The fact is that, other than Zuerlein, the Cowboys players did not execute the play properly. I'm sure the design of the kick did not include a plan for the Falcon players to be mesmerized, but they just stood there looking at the ball until it was too late. To properly execute the play, the Cowboys players should have been blocking them away from the ball. The kicking team can't touch the ball until it goes 10 yards, but they can certainly block the other team before the ball goes 10 yards. They should have been blocking for the ball as if the ball were a ball-carrier trying to reach that 10 yards. This type of kick probably negates the purpose behind the rule change. A slow kick=more players involved, some of them getting a 20 yard running start.

This is just my prediction on onside kicks going forward the rest of the season, until the rule committe outlaws "watermelon" kicks.

I wonder if Atl players didn't want to risk flubbing the recovery since it was spinning so much and it didn't look like it was going to get to 10 yards.

Kickers and punters do almost nothing all week in practice
They should have plenty of time to come up with 50 or so ways to convert an onside kick

Red Dragon said:

Zuerlein pulled off the trick perfectly, but it's only going to work once. From this point on, all Cowboys opponents are going to pounce on that ball before it goes 10 yards. They aren't going to stand and watch like the Falcons did.

So does he have to go back to performing normal traditional onside kicks from this point on?

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Play well enough for the game not to come to an onside kick and it won't be an issue.

As Cowboy fans, let's hope that this team is never again in the position to need to recover an onside kick again....at least in our lifetime. That game was way too stressful especially for something that has no effect on whether the sun will come up tomorrow.

CowboysWillRise said:

its possible that Atlanta wasn't just stupid, but didn't anticipate the ball going 10 yards, and therefore didn't want to risk jumping on it while its spinning around and end up losing it creating a live ball.

If Zuerlein can get enough spin on that ball who knows, maybe it works again? All I know for sure is that was a hell of an onside kick play.

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Plus if they jump on it there’s no guarantee it doesn’t slip out

Have one of the kicking balls as brand new with no wear and tear on it and use that for the onside kick.. not only the spin but also the slipperiness of a new ball would at least give us some kind of chance.. use the same ball used in Seattle when TR dropped the snap

8FOR!3 said:

Plus if they jump on it there’s no guarantee it doesn’t slip out

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Yes sir, that's what I'm trying to get at. I imagine it's easier said then done if that ball has enough spin on it.

Jipper said:

I say kick the $$$$ out of the other team for the first 58 mins so you don’t have to onside kick it with 2 mins to go

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Duh, but this answer is meaningless. Of course every team that has to do an onside kick wishes they didn't have to do one. If it were as simple as "We'll kick the #$#($*(* out of the other team," the Cowboys would go 16-0 every year.

You can't go 16-0 just because you want to.

If the Falcons fell on the floor the kick wouldn’t have mattered

im glad we recovered it but they had 6 men looking at it

JoeKing said:

Play well enough for the game not to come to an onside kick and it won't be an issue.

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Again, if it were this easy, no team would ever have to onside.

Some people seem to think that winning is as easy as saying "I want to win".