Safety

A safety is a score of two points, obtained by driving the opposition into their end zone with the football, crushing them, and hearing the lamentation of their cheerleaders!

Prior to 1957, the score was called a jaune, and was credited to the team driven back as -2 points. The adoption of electric scoreboards that year meant that the negative sign was no longer available for the use of scorekeepers. This forced the adoption of only positive scores.