WHY MESS WITH TIME-WASTING KICKOFFS AND JUST GIVE A RETURNER THE FOOTBALL?
Even with big rules changes, the NFL knows the booted ball isn’t accomplishing much — preseason field position stalls at the 28.3 yard line; it was 25.2 in 2023 — and touchbacks should start at the 35
Other than soccer gloss, what is the point of a football drilled from the 35-yard line and serving as a kickoff? Fans have been weighing gambling odds, visiting stores for jerseys, finding tickets via online searches and squandering deep tensions. Explain the function, then, of allowing kicks to linger in the stadium airstream at the start of games and throughout an entire three-hour experience.
Let folks charge into the Sunday frenzy instead of making them wait several more seconds for the ball to drop, with unlikely titillation. If the NFL wants more action at the beginning or during all resumptions, why not banish the boot altogether and let a returner start directly from his goal line, with safer new blocking rules only yards away? Don’t call it the kickoff.
Call it revivalism, with a ball and a runner and no time-wasting arc.
Otherwise, the league continues to allow kickoffs that usually mean nothing. Last season, only 22 percent of kicks were brought into play. And yet, despite radical rules changes, average field position for teams has stalled this preseason at the 28.3-yard line — when last year, as owners decided kickoffs were more boring than Jerry Jones’ sauna slipper, the yard number was only steps away at 25.2. When the regular season moves on, why would coaches screw around when his kicker boots, his kickoff team stands on the receiving team’s 40 and a nine-player receiving team lines up at its 35?
The new way is more secure than the old way, without full-sprint collisions from downfield. But from what I’ve seen in August, why would anyone mess with league patterns and algorithms over a mere three-yard difference? Just kick it out of the end zone, where a touchback places the ball at the 30 or where a downed ball does the same. It doesn’t make sense, when 6.2 coaches have left franchises over each of the last nine seasons, that anyone would risk careers by kicking into the party zone and seeing someone return it for a lamebrain touchdown instead of pounding into a quickly gathering defense.
That’s why the NFL, which will make more than $20 billion this season and can do what it wants, should move the touchback rule to at least the 35-yard line. That would force a coach to consider trying a kick or accepting a touchback with consequences. This opinion foresees problems next month and is gathering support in the media. But Dawn Aponte, the league’s chief football administrative officer, said this week that any change from the 30 to the 35 is “not likely,” adding, “The way that we passed this and discussed it with the competition committee as well as membership at large was really about continuing to evaluate. It is a one-year rule change, so we anticipate to evaluate this throughout the season.” Roger Goodell and the owners want to give any splash at least a year’s time, even as we watch more kickoffs veering beyond the landing zone — the 20-yard line to the end zone — and the ball is sent to the 30.
“It just feels weird. I know the intent is right. We’ll try to figure it out,” Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay said.
“When you put guys in different spots that they haven’t been in before, there’s just different timing and how it’s going to play out,” San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan said. “I think it’s going to be a different thing each week.”
As in: Kick away, especially when games are in November and December.
“I think there’s gonna be some experimenting going on and just seeing what you need, but the special-teams coaches will take care of that with personnel guys and work that out,” Kansas City coach Andy Reid said.
“I like it,” Jones said in Dallas. “You can also see how punitive it can be.”
Punitive? When the Cowboys kicked a ball out of bounds in Las Vegas, the Raiders were given a first down at their own 40 and rushed for 48 yards on the next play. A kicker can’t keep the ball in bounds when his teammates are nowhere near him?
The idea was to allow “2,000 additional plays’’ per year. But in the preseason, when teams are willing to try tricks, few returners have discovered anything but swarms of bodies rushing from the 40. The NFL is trying to appease fans. A format used in the XFL needed more development. “I think it’s important to find ways to bring excitement back for our fans and us,” Atlanta coach Raheem Morris said. “And also to make special teams coaches more relevant, right? We don’t want to lose relevance in any position. We’re going to fight the battles of the unknown.”
How about fighting the known battle of Patrick Mahomes? In September, when Tom Brady is analyzing in the Fox booth, teams will take stabs. But if the return doesn’t work, or the average pickup is barely noticeable, expect coaches to scrap the razzle-dazzle. Let opponents take the ball at the 30.
Stunning, isn’t it, that we care so much about football that we quibble like this?
My Apple Watch is dinging. Tyreek Hill at the goal line makes the most sense, without Noah Lyles.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.