A new rule the NFL can do without

We’ve managed to put a long, dreary month between ourselves and the Super Bowl, but just about everyone retains a clear memory that the Kansas City Chiefs beating the San Francisco 49ers neck-deep in overtime was some great football theater that had everything.

Everything, it turns out, except the most elemental of football procedures, your basic kickoff return.

As my friend Judy Battista with NFL Network recently emphasized, 13 kickoffs sailed through the fevered atmosphere inside Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, and every last one flew harmlessly through the end zone as the players walked to the sidelines.

Judy reported last week that only 22% of kickoffs were returned in the NFL last season, prompting the best brains in the game to conclude that they don’t want the kickoff to become a “ceremonial” or “non-competitive play.”

But if that 0 for 13 in the biggest game of the season was a little weird, things might be about to get, uh, real weird.

The proposal to re-energize the kickoff that’s to be discussed at the league’s annual meetings later this month is borrowed from the XFL, an eight-team league that folded into the United Football League with teams like the Arlington Renegades and the St. Louis Battlehawks. Me neither.

Anyway, here’s how the kickoff would work based on its XFL-inspired framework:

The kicker tees it up at the 30yard line, with no player within 35 yards of him, a lonesome dove in an experimental play. You heard me.

The kicker’s teammates line up along the opposite 35, with everyone on the receiving team lined up 5 yards in front of them, at their 30 — at least everyone except the presumed return man, whom I assume will be somewhere near the goal line.

Generally when I see a general formation like this on a football field, the first thing I think of is, “OK, who is going to dot the ‘i’ in Ohio?” Because it looks like band practice, right?

But that question would evaporate once the ball is kicked because when that happens, when the ball is finally in the air after another week of intense buildup and anticipation, under the proposed new kickoff rule … nobody moves. Just like when the cops break down the door with the battering ram in the old “Law & Order” and Ice-T comes in and says, “Nobody move!”

Everyone just stands frozen in place except the returner, who can move to field the kick. Then and only then may the other players activate themselves to do what they’d normally do on a kickoff, except now they’ll likely run a shorter distance with diminished momentum, resulting in fewer and less severe injuries than the traditional kickoff typically engenders.

Oh boy. I mean, well, safety first. If that strikes you as less than appealing, wait until you hear how it impacts the onside kick protocols, which I understand still aren’t fully fleshed out. As it’s being reported, they might include stipulations that an onside kick can only be attempted by a team trailing in the fourth quarter and that the kicking team must declare its intentions.

If that is what gets decided later this month, I’m OK with it as long as the special teams captain goes to a center-of-the-field microphone and says exactly this: “I declare that the (team name) are about to attempt an onside kick, and I declare this so as not to embarrass our worthy opponents by injecting any aspect of surprise subterfuge or to unduly burden our loyal audience with more drama than it might safely absorb. You’re welcome.”

The main problem with kickoff returns as they are currently constituted is fairly intractable. Football executives, scouts and coaches can’t keep choosing and training the biggest, fastest, strongest humans, bang them into each other and expect them to walk away healthy. Like it or not, there’s an element of danger to all of this that’s no small part of what makes the NFL a perpetual TV ratings fireball.