How Many Points Is a Touchdown? American Football Scoring Explained

The answer, and the whole scoring system

A touchdown is six points. The NFL rulebook sets out every way to score in one short article (Rule 11, Section 1, Article 2):

Scoring play	Points
Touchdown	6
Field goal	3
Safety	2
Try after touchdown — by kick	1
Try after touchdown — by touchdown	2

So a touchdown plus a successful kick is seven, and a touchdown plus a successful two-point conversion is eight. The touchdown itself is always six — the extra point is a separate scoring play that happens to follow it.

There is even a defined score for a game that is never played: a forfeit is recorded as 2-0, though those points do not count towards offensive production or tiebreakers.

What actually counts as a touchdown

The rulebook’s definition is more precise than “getting the ball into the end zone”, and the precision is where all the goal-line controversies come from.

A touchdown is scored when the ball is on, above, or behind the plane of the opponent’s goal line and in possession of a runner who has advanced from the field of play into the end zone.

That word plane is the whole thing. The ball does not have to land in the end zone, or come to rest there, or even stay there. It only has to break an invisible vertical plane rising from the goal line while a player has possession. A runner who reaches the ball out, breaks the plane, and is pushed back has still scored.

The rulebook extends this to the pylons: a ball in possession of an airborne runner counts if it is on, above or behind the plane and some part of the ball passed over or inside the pylon.

The try: one point or two, and where it starts from

Distances like these move more often than people expect, because NFL rules are decided by an owners’ vote rather than written by the league — and some are adopted for a single season at a time.

After a touchdown, the try is one scrimmage down in which either team can score. The rulebook is specific about the mechanics:

• The try begins when the referee sounds the whistle.
• The game clock does not run during the try.
• The scoring team puts the ball in play anywhere on or between the inbound lines, and then:
  • 15 yards from the defence’s goal line for a try kick, or
  • two yards from the defence’s goal line for a try by pass or run.

The offence may change its choice after a penalty or a charged timeout by either team.

That 15-yard snap for the kick is why extra points are no longer automatic. Moving them back turned a formality into a genuine, occasionally missed, kick — which in turn made going for two a real strategic option rather than a desperation move.

Two scoring plays almost nobody knows

The try article contains two provisions that surprise even regular viewers.

The defence can score two points

If a Try results in a touchdown by either team, two points are awarded.

A defence that recovers a fumble or intercepts a pass during a try, and returns it the length of the field, scores two points. This is a real, live rule — not a curiosity — and it is why defences keep playing on what looks like a dead extra-point attempt.

The one-point safety

If the Try results in what would ordinarily be a safety against either team, one point is awarded to the opponent.

This is the rarest scoring play in American football. It requires an odd sequence during a try — for instance, the defence gaining possession and then being downed in its own end zone. The result is a single point, awarded to the team that did not commit it.

Most fans will never see one. It has occurred only a handful of times in decades of professional and college play, which is exactly why it is worth knowing the rule exists: when it happens, the scoreboard shows a number that looks like an error.

What a safety actually is

Outside the try, a safety is two points to the defending team. The rulebook gives two triggers:

• the offence commits a foul behind its own goal line and the defence elects to enforce the penalty at that spot; or
• an impetus by a team sends the ball behind its own goal line, and the ball is dead in the end zone in its possession, or out of bounds behind the goal line.

The key idea is impetus — whose action sent the ball there. A team that puts itself in its own end zone concedes the safety; a ball driven there by the opponent’s kick is a touchback instead.

There are exceptions. A forward pass from behind the line of scrimmage that falls incomplete in the end zone is not a safety.

Scoring compared with other codes

Points values look arbitrary until you compare them, and then a pattern appears: each sport sets its values so that the hardest achievement dominates.

	Hardest score	Kick-based score
American football	Touchdown — 6	Field goal — 3
Rugby union	Try — 5	Penalty / drop goal — 3

Both sports make the grounded-ball score worth roughly twice a kick, and both add a kick on top of it — American football’s try, rugby’s conversion. The two games share an ancestor, and the scoring structure is one of the clearest places you can still see it.

The difference is what they did next. Rugby kept its conversion at two points. American football split its try into a one-point kick and a two-point play, and then moved the kick back 15 yards to make the choice interesting.

For the sport that shares even more of that ancestry, see the offside rule — and more breakdowns of how sports work are in rules and techniques.

A note on scope

This page follows the NFL rulebook. College football runs under NCAA rules, which differ in several places, and high-school football differs again. The six-point touchdown is universal, but details such as try distances and some safety provisions are not — check the relevant code if you are officiating rather than watching.