Reforming the draft to The Larry David Rule: NFL changes we’d like to see

The NFL will look radically different next season. The league’s owners voted on Tuesday to approve a new kickoff rule originally adopted in the XFL.

It is one of the most groundbreaking changes in league history. After slowly legislating the kickoff out of the sport, the league is embracing a new ‘hybrid’ approach that turns the kickoff into something approaching a traditional football play. No longer will kickoffs be passing moments, a chance for broadcasters to cram in a couple of commercial breaks.

Under the new rule, 21 of the 22 players on the field will line up on the returner’s side of the field. Only the kicker will be in the kicking team’s territory. The entire rule is convoluted – get ready to learn about ‘landing zones’ and ‘set up zones’. But the upshot is this: more returns, more action, fewer injuries. The rule also scraps fair catches. If the returner catches the ball in the landing zone, they must return it.

There are few things as enjoyable as a returner popping a run. But the NFL has struggled to find a balancing act between maintaining the electric jolt of the return game while minimizing the risk of injuries. Over the past decade, the NFL has reported a three to five times higher concussion rate on kickoffs than typical offense-defense plays, largely due to the distance between the kicking and returning units and the violence of those collisions.

In one season in the XFL, the league reported there were zero injuries in more than 400 kickoffs that used the hybrid design. “The goal is to get the injury rate and concussion rate to be very similar to a run or pass play from scrimmage,” Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice-president of communications,