New Kickoff Rule Aims to Put Returns Back Into the Game

[Skinsfan1311]

21 hours ago, Dan T. said:

 

Joey Slye's kickoffs resulted in a touchback 88.9% of the time in 2023. And of the 11.1% (8 kicks) that weren't touchbacks, I'm pretty sure all but one were onside kick attempts or squibs. Overall, the entire league had a grand total of 3 kickoff returns for TDs in 2023.

 

Kickoffs became a perfect time to go get another beer out of the fridge.

 

 

So...the 15-25 commercials during each quarter aren't enough time to make a beer run? 🤔

[Darrell Green Fan]

On 3/26/2024 at 1:54 PM, AZDave said:

This explains the special teams signings. that i was scratching my head about

 

When I first saw the new rule I pushed back, it looked like they were turning the NFL into a clown show. But once I got past the optics I love this new rule, it adds excitement.  Then I immediately thought about our new Teams coach and all the signings specifically targeting good special teams players and I think the new rule will be an advantage for us.  Suddenly kick returners hold value again and it could affect who teams draft in the later rounds.  

[Dan T.]

2 hours ago, Skinsfan1311 said:

So...the 15-25 commercials during each quarter aren't enough time to make a beer run? 🤔

 

Following this team for the last 20 years there are NEVER enough beer breaks. 

[Skinsfan1311]

Just now, Dan T. said:

 

Following this team for the last 20 years there are NEVER enough beer breaks. 

.....or enough beer.....

[Welsh Redskin]

This new kickoff rule could open the door for different kinds of players to make an impact. Interesting to see the Chiefs are signing Louis Rees Zammit to their practice squad as part of the International Pathway. Its long shot he ever comes close but I think they've signed him with ST in mind. One of the best Rugby wingers in the world.

[Koolblue13]

As far as the no surprise onside kicks thing. The Eagles had proposed (which I now assume is because of this change), that instead of an onside kick, you get one 4rth and 20 play from your own 20 yard line. Get the first, keep driving. Don't get a first, turnover on downs.

 

That would make more sense, but penalties would be too easy. I could see a Mahomes/Brady type who can get a penalty PI call any time they wanted.

[petey hodge]

On 3/27/2024 at 1:52 PM, Momma There Goes That Man said:

while making it more safe as well. 
 

 

 

Jordan Reed just sprained his ankle reading your post.

OUT 6-8 weeks.

 

 

[CommanderInTheRye]

There's an interesting and questionably ethical , angle play, that the new kickoff rules create that might increase the injury risk to kickers.

 

Under the new rules, penalties on extra point attempts will not change  the kickoff configuration. After a penalty offensive and defensive players, other than the kicker, will still line up in the same location, 10 yards apart from each other.

 

Therefore, there's minimal downside to an all out attack on the kicker, even if it leads to a roughing penalty and/or injury to the kicker. 

 

From PFT...

 

 

It could be open season on kickers during extra points

 

Published March 29, 2024 

 

Whenever the NFL changes rules, an opportunity arises for potential unintended consequences. Those unintended consequences can arise from a coach spotting a way to fairly exploit any loopholes arising from the rule change.

 

For the revolutionary new configuration to the kickoff, there’s one very potentially significant loophole that can become a significant, and problematic, unintended consequence.

 

As passed by 29 owners, the new kickoff configuration will not change if there’s a penalty that carries over from the try. The penalty will move only the spot of the actual kick. Which, in most cases, will be meaningless.

 

The kick itself still must be land between the goal line and the 20, and the action won’t begin until the kick is caught, or until the ball hits the ground in the 20-yard landing zone.

 

So if the team that scores a touchdown opts for the traditional one-point try, what’s the downside to sending players aggressively after the kicker, with a directive to go all out for the block and not worry about crashing into him? The penalty, whether five yards for running into the kicker or 15 for roughing the kicker, will mean nothing to the ensuing kickoff.

 

Hopefully, teams won’t deliberately try to injure the kicker. That said, it would potentially be open season on hitting them during or after a kick, because there will be no fear of a significant downside. Once kickers realize it’s coming, they might get even skittish before the kick — making a miss more likely. And if, through the application of a clean, legal hit the kicker is unable to continue in a given game, the kicking team will potentially have a hard time placing the ball in the 20-yard landing zone with a backup kicker.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 30 by CommanderInTheRye

[Conn]

The NFL can leverage fines (levied against the usually less well-paid Special Teams players, mostly depth players) but there’s also the specter of mutually assured destruction. Do teams want to purposely open their own kicker up to this fate as well, or will teams honor another “unwritten rule” and thus, keep their own kicker mostly unmolested.

 

This is a loophole that will close quickly, imo. Not to mention that refs can call unsportsmanlike conduct or unnecessary roughness on these hits if they want and eject guys. 

[RVAskins]

2 minutes ago, Conn said:

or will teams honor another “unwritten rule”

We know Mara will be watching us to make sure we don't break an unwritten rule.

[Warhead36]

Honestly if my K has the leg for it I'd just drive it out the end zone and give it to them at the 30 everytime. Why take some kinda risk? Unless I'm 100% super confident in my special teams.

[Number 44]

20 minutes ago, RVAskins said:

We know Mara will be watching us to make sure we don't break an unwritten rule.

The spirit of the kickoff.

[CommanderInTheRye]

From SI.com a long, but very interesting article on how the sausage (aka new kick off rule) got made.

 

It has a lot of fascinating insider info.

 

XXX

 

What’s convinced me to get behind the new kickoff rule, and be open-minded about it, is the amount of time the special teams coaches put into it. And talking to New Orleans Saints special teams coach Darren Rizzi, who captained the effort alongside the Dallas Cowboys’ John Fassel and Chicago Bears’ Richard Hightower—on Friday after he’d had a couple days to digest everything—it was pretty clear that the work the larger group invested was most satisfying to him.

 

It wasn’t easy to get it passed, to be sure. Last Monday night, as commissioner Roger Goodell went to work to try and get the final votes, the kickoff was still four or five votes shy of the 24 needed to pass. That it’s going on as a one-year trial helped to get proponents a lot more than just that—in the end, 29 teams voted yes, with the San Francisco 49ers, Green Bay Packers and Las Vegas Raiders the lone dissenters.

 

It also will take some getting used to, seeing the kicker by himself at his own 35-yard line, the coverage team at the opponent’s 40, nine or 10 guys from the return team between the 35 and 30, and one or two return men deep.

 

But in the end, the new rule accomplished what the special teams coaches wanted, which is to try and a) make the kickoff return an exciting play again and b) make it sustainable long-term.

 

“It was a proud moment when that vote went through; I’m not going to lie,” Rizzi says. “Me and Bones [Fassel], we’re sitting there, and they voted on it, and it went through, it was like, Man, we have a chance here to change the game forever, not only at our level, but a lot of levels.Now, it’s on us. It’s on the special teams coaches to get it right and to make sure this thing works.”

 

With that in mind, I figured we’d give you a little bit from Rizzi on what’s behind him, and the rest of the special teams coaches, and what’s ahead for them, too.

 

• The hardest part to get people to agree to was exactly what you’d expect—how different the play looked. “When you’re presenting something totally radical, totally new and totally different to everybody, to a bunch of old school football guys, to get everybody on the same page is really hard,” Rizzi says. “The second part of that is after we met, once we settled on the framework of a proposal, there’s a lot of ideas that started floating.” 

 

So the guys leading the effort had to synthesize everything, with the NFL’s Troy Vincent and Jeff Miller giving the coaches a blank canvas, and a mandate to make the play safer and more exciting. Suffice it to say, it took a lot of work around these guys’ day jobs to settle on the template the XFL established last spring, then tweak it to everyone’s liking.

 

• The biggest changes to the XFL proposal were made to the return team’s setup zone—rather than having 10 guys on a line, they allowed for two returners, rather than just one, and required just seven guys on that line, with two to three free to be up to five yards behind them. In the end, the tweaking and adjusting was pretty constant, and that went right into last week, when they set the touchback for a ball getting to the end zone on the fly, and downed there, at the 30, thinking taking it to the 35, as had been proposed, was too punitive.

 

“The premise of the arguments behind it is some of the coaches felt like, Alright, listen, if I’m winning at the end of the game, I’m up by a couple scores, and there’s a couple minutes left and I got to kick off, maybe I don’t want to cover a kick. Maybe I’m O.K. with them getting the ball at the 30. Maybe I’m okay kicking the ball for a touchback,” Rizzi says. “They just felt like the 35 might be too punitive.”

 

• I asked Rizzi what he thinks this will look like a month or two into the 2024 season. His prediction: By then, a lot of the kinks will be worked out.

 

“I think a month into the season you’re going to see a lot more balls being returned,” he says. “I think you’re going to see the injury rates go down, especially with the high-speed collisions and the mistimed injuries. And I think it’s going to be one of those things where when people were used to going to the bathroom or all that when the kickoff was on, now it’s going to be one of those, S---, I gotta watch this.”

 

• As for what wound up being important to the larger group of 55, or so, special teams coaches who met in Indianapolis at the combine? The answer, for Rizzi, was simple, too. They wanted the play resurrected after years of the league burying it.

 

“It was a lot of the older veteran coaches saying to the younger coaches, This play used to be extremely relevant,” Rizzi says.“This play used to be 80% return rate. Eight, or nine, out of every 10 kickoffs were being returned. Now we’re down to two out of 10. It was really important for a lot of the veteran coaches, and for the younger guys to understand, Let’s make this play relevant again.”

 

That made changing the rule a priority to Rizzi. As he approached it, and the owners discussed it in their meetings last week, there was a pretty funny moment. As Rizzi went over the ins and outs of the rule, Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said, “Coach, don’t you think the fourth-and-20 proposal [as a substitute for an onside kick] would be a great compliment to this?” Rizzi responded, “Mr. Lurie, are you sure you want me to answer that question?”

 

Those in the room laughed, and then Lurie, smiling, asked him again. Rizzi explained his issues with the proposal, which was shot down soon thereafter. Jokes aside, it was a good moment for a respected special teams coach to feel heard in a room full of some of the sport’s power brokers. And the cool thing is special teams coaches could feel like they were listened to. Which is a good reason for all of us to give this thing a shot.

 

 

[Sacks 'n' Stuff]

If they want to make kickoffs more exciting, make it so that once possessions has been established, any fumble is a dead ball.