What does defer mean when winning the coin toss? I was curious to see what the actual rule was when a team says defer. It means that in the second half the winning coin toss team can elect to receive or kick in the second half. For the first half the losing coin toss team can elect to receive or kick for the first half. There was a game against the Rams where a team I believe the cowboys screwed up and said they wanted to kickoff after winning the toss which gave the Rams the option of receiving also in the second half. I was always under the assumption when you kickoff in the first half you automatically would receive in second half. I was not ever aware that you could be stuck kicking off both halves until that cowboys game that was overturned and kept the cowboys only kicking off once.
