Kickoff would look strange, but it might work
When reviewing leaguewide stats after last season, two numbers stopped Rich McKay in his tracks: The NFL had 1,970 touchbacks in 2023 (73 percent), and 13,530 kickoff return yards. McKay, the chairman of the competition committee, compared those numbers with the 2010 season. That year had 416 touchbacks (16.4 percent) and 45,420 return yards.
“We’ve taken too much out of the game. It’s too exciting of a play,” McKay said Thursday.
In an effort to make the kickoff safer — the NFL says the rate of concussion is roughly twice the rate of a regular play from scrimmage — the league essentially killed it. There were 23 kickoff return touchdowns in 2010, but just four in 2023. February’s Super Bowl had 13 touchbacks and zero returns.
No one in the NFL was happy with the state of kickoffs in 2023, especially since all of the rule tweaks didn’t solve the main problem.
“We made the play a non-event, but we just have not been able to find a way to make the play safer,” McKay said.
So McKay and the competition committee are starting from scratch in 2024, proposing radical changes that the NFL hopes satisfies both of its goals of making the kickoff safer, while increasing returns.
The new rules are similar to the ones used by the XFL the last two years, but with a few modifications. It’s the product of two years of work from McKay, the competition committee, and special teams coordinators John Fassel (Cowboys), Darren Rizzi (Saints), and Richard Hightower (Bears), with input from NFL health and safety and other coaches.
The proposal was revealed to media this past week and will be voted upon by owners this coming week at their annual league meetings in Orlando, Fla. A vote of 24 of 32 owners is needed to adopt the rules, and it would be a surprise if it doesn’t pass, since fixing the kickoff play has been one of commissioner Roger Goodell’s top initiatives. The rules are likely to be adopted on a one-year trial basis, with the NFL likely reserving the right to tweak the rules after observing three weeks of preseason games.
“To us, this was the time,” McKay said. “The play will feel different and radical, but this play has been used, and we saw it in the XFL for two years.”
What made the kickoff more dangerous than typical plays, particularly with concussions, was that there was too much open field for players to reach top speeds before colliding with opponents. So here are the key changes:
■ The kicker will still kick from his 35-yard line, but the other 10 players will line up on the opponent’s 40. The receiving team will have nine players lining up between its 30-35, meaning there will only be 5-10 yards of space between 19 of 22 players. This could eliminate most high-speed collisions.
■ The new rules create a landing zone, which is between the goal line and 20-yard line. Any kick that hits in the landing zone must be returned. The 19 players aligned in the field can’t move until the ball hits a player or the ground in the landing zone. The receiving team must have two returners aligned in the landing zone who can move at any time. The kicker can’t cross the 50 until the ball hits in the landing zone.
■ The NFL hopes that requiring two returners to align in the landing zone will create more returns.
“The special teams coaches did a great job of showing us that putting one returner back there would lead to too many games, and too many [kickers] trying to do things with the football,” McKay said.
■ The new rules will effectively have three levels of touchbacks. A kickoff that flies out of the end zone, or is downed in the end zone after reaching it on the fly, is a touchback to the 35. This is to encourage kickers to keep the ball within the field of play.
■ A kickoff that hits the ground in the landing zone, rolls into the end zone, and is downed will be a touchback to the 20. This is to encourage the receiving team to return kicks.
■ A kickoff that hits short of the landing zone will be treated the same as a kickoff out of bounds. The play will be immediately blown dead and the ball will be placed on the 40. A source involved said this is to discourage kickers from hitting line drives that would bounce into the end zone.
“If the kick doesn’t make it to the 20 it comes out to the 40, so it’s a big riskreward,” the source said. “You’re trying to encourage regular kickoffs between the goal line and the 10 so the play doesn’t look sloppy.”
■ The fair catch would be outlawed on kickoffs. Last year’s rule, which allowed for a touchback to the 25 on any fair catch, would be scrapped.
■ Because of the formation rules, the surprise onside kick would also be scrapped. In this proposal, teams would only be allowed to attempt an onside kick in the fourth quarter if trailing, and must inform the officials beforehand. The league’s previous rules governing onside kicks would remain.
■ Safety punts would remain at the 20, but the landing zone and player alignment would remain the same.
The new kickoff is going to look strange, and the NFL laments having to eliminate the surprise onside kick. But McKay hopes that they found the right solution — the new rules encourage returns, penalize touchbacks, and could eliminate most high-speed collisions.
The NFL hopes these rules will not only bring the kickoff back, but help increase scoring thanks to better field position.
“For us to tell you exactly how it’s going to go, we don’t know,” McKay said. “We do believe that if you move the start line of the drives that you’re going to see a change in scoring. And we will definitely see some things that will create some excitement this year.”
TACKLING A BIG PROBLEM League aims to ban hip-drop
A look at a few other topics that will be discussed at this coming week’s owners’ meetings:
■ The other big rule change likely to be adopted is the banning of the “hipdrop tackle,” in which a defender grabs a ball carrier from behind, twists him to the ground, and lands on his knee or ankle, often resulting in significant injury. The NFL says this technique has an injury rate that is 20-25 times higher than a typical tackle.
“This is a play where the person getting tackled is really defenseless at that moment,” competition committee chairman Rich McKay said.
The NFL doesn’t want to ban all tackles from behind, so it attempted to use specific language to identify a hipdrop. The defender:
1. Grabs the runner with both hands or wraps with both arms; and
2. Unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and/or lower body, landing on and trapping the runner’s leg at or below the knee.
The NFL wants to make the hipdrop a 15-yard penalty and treat it like a horse-collar tackle. The NFL Players Association has said for months that it is squarely against banning the hipdrop because it will create confusion for officials and make life too difficult for defenders. But the NFL doesn’t seem inclined to listen to the players on this one.
“I respect their position, but as the gatekeepers of the game, this is something that we have to remove,” NFL executive vice president Troy Vincent said. “The intent is not to throw more flags, but the intent is to remove that style of play.”
■ Owners will consider moving the trade deadline, currently the Tuesday after Week 8, back a week or two. The Steelers propose moving it to Week 9, and six teams propose moving it to Week 10. McKay said the NFL prefers an earlier trade deadline to prevent teams from doing white-flag trades, but the season is now longer (18 weeks) and injuries have affected playoff races the last two years.
■ McKay acknowledged that the decrease in scoring “gives us concern a little bit.” The league averaged 43.5 points per game last season, its second fewest since the start of the 2010 season and nearly a touchdown less than the highwater mark of 49.6 points per game in 2020. The 2022 season was just a tick better at 43.8 points per game.
“We spent a lot of time trying to understand that,” McKay said. “Fortythree points is not a bad place to be. It’s just we’d love that number be closer to 45 or above.”
McKay said it could a combination of factors, including defenses playing more two-high safety looks to prevent big passes, fewer defensive penalties called, and a record number of starting quarterbacks the last two seasons.
■ The Colts are proposing that teams and replay officials be allowed to challenge any penalty in the final two minutes of a half. McKay said that allowing for penalties to be challenged has “always historically been a big leap for the membership,” which is a diplomatic way of saying, “No chance this passes.”
ETC. Tush push, Brady not on the agenda
Two items that won’t be discussed in Orlando: The tush push and Tom Brady’s bid to buy a slice of the Raiders.
The tush push, the short-yardage play made famous by the Eagles, looks dangerous, but the NFL doesn’t have any injury data stating so, so the league is leaving the play alone, NFL executive vice president Troy Vincent said.
And Brady’s minority ownership stake with the Raiders, pending approval of 24 owners for nearly a year, is not scheduled to be brought up for a vote, a league source confirmed Friday.
Brady’s bid remains under review by the finance committee, which has raised two concerns: That Brady is getting too deep of a discount on his slice of the Raiders, who are valued by Forbes at more than $6 billion, and the potential conflict of interest of Brady owning a piece of the Raiders while calling games each Sunday for Fox. It’s fair to wonder if Brady and the Raiders will eventually just call off the deal.
Get out of town
Mac Jones apparently wasn’t the only young quarterback who alienated his team and was dumped for almost nothing. The Steelers traded Kenny Pickett,
the No. 20 overall pick in 2022, to the Eagles this past week for essentially two seventh-round picks. It’s the fastest the Steelers moved on from a first-rounder since 1996, per the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and it sounds like they couldn’t wait to get rid of him.
Though Pickett went 14-10 as a starter in two seasons, he threw just 13 touchdown passes against 13 interceptions in 24 games, and expressed “petulant behavior” last year, per the Post-Gazette, when he didn’t regain his starting job at the end of the season after healing from an ankle injury. Pickett even refused to dress as the emergency third quarterback for the Week 17 win at Seattle, per the report.
Pickett finally earned his way out of town after expressing unhappiness over the Steelers’ signing of Russell Wilson
and canceling an informal workout with receivers the day after Wilson’s addition. Pickett will back up Jalen Hurts
in Philadelphia and said he has no regrets about the end of his tenure in Pittsburgh.
“I handled it the way I should have handled it,” Pickett said.
It’s been mixed bag for third QB
With the Patriots holding the No. 3 pick in the NFL Draft, and looking like they may take the third quarterback in the draft, it’s worth looking at the recent history of similar quarterbacks. Since the rookie wage scale was implemented in 2011, there have been 10 quarterbacks that were the third one taken in the first round.
The list includes: two franchise quarterbacks (Josh Allen, Justin Herbert), three decent-to-good quarterbacks (Deshaun Watson, Ryan Tannehill, Anthony Richardson), two career backups (Teddy Bridgewater, Blaine Gabbert), and three busts (Paxton Lynch, Dwayne Haskins, Trey Lance). And Richardson could still blossom into a superstar if he can stay healthy.
That makes a 50 percent chance of landing a viable starter, a 20 (or 30) percent chance of landing a superstar, and a 30 percent chance of landing a bust. It’s yet another bone for the Patriots to chew on for the next five weeks as they weigh taking Drake Maye, J.J. McCarthy ,or Jayden Daniels.
Extra points
The Steelers now have the NFL’s most fascinating quarterback room with Wilson and Justin Fields both looking to resurrect their careers. While Wilson is the presumed starter, keep in mind that the Steelers are paying him only $1.21 million, and they’re paying Fields $3.23 million. This feels like a classic “when you have two quarterbacks, you have none” situation. Fans are going to be clamoring for Fields the minute Wilson throws an interception . . . The Dolphins got robbed in the playoffs — literally. Fox 4 in Kansas City reported that a 30-year-old man was charged with stealing more than $46,000 of media equipment, pads, gloves, and film from the Dolphins during their wild-card loss to the Chiefs. Dolphins staffers noticed the items were missing shortly after the game and alerted police, who later identified the man’s truck with security footage ... Jimmy Garoppolo enters the season as a backup for the first time since 2017, but he may have found a decent situation with the Rams. He’s familiar with several coaches — offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur worked with him for 3½ years in San Francisco, pass game coordinator Nick Caley was with him for 3½ years in New England, and offensive line coach Ryan Wendell was Garoppolo’s teammate for two years with the Patriots. And with Matthew Stafford entering his 16th season with a history of back and elbow injuries, Garoppolo is good insurance for a team that has Super Bowl aspirations . . . The Bengals will have more than 700 pounds at offensive tackle in 2024. Left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. is6 feet 8 inches and 345 pounds, and new right tackle Trent Brown is 6-8, 370 . . . Netflix, NFL Films, and Omaha Productions couldn’t find enough volunteers for “Quarterbacks 2,” a potential followup to last year’s all-access series. So they pivoted to “Receivers,” which followed Davante Adams, Justin Jefferson, George Kittle, Deebo Samuel, and Amon-Ra St. Brown throughout the 2023 season. The eight-part series will be released this summer . . . Of the 19 quarterbacks drafted in 2021-22, only two are expected to enter the 2024 season as starters — Trevor Lawrence and Brock Purdy. Zach Wilson, Lance, Fields, Jones, Pickett, and Desmond Ridder have all lost starting jobs . . . Bengals receiver Tee Higgins, who requested a trade after getting the franchise tag, was asked this past week by NBC Sports which quarterbacks he’d like to play with. After starting with Joe Burrow, Higgins named Lawrence, C.J. Stroud, Lamar Jackson, and Allen. Of course, the Bengals don’t seem inclined to fulfill Higgins’s trade request as of now.