NFL Special Teams Players, Coaches Fighting New Kickoff Rule

NFL officials left the March owners’ meetings in Arizona with the idea that a new rule governing kickoffs would be rubber-stamped in late May in Minnesota. They’ll end up there next week with a lot more to think about than they bargained for.

According to several sources, strong opposition to the rule change has coalesced among special teams coaches and players over the last week, bonding them to form an organized effort to kill the proposal.

The proposal, approved by the competition committee, then tabled by the owners in March, would allow for fair catches inside the 25-yard line to be ruled as touchbacks, with the ball then being spotted at the 25. The proposal was in response to an uptick in concussions on kickoffs over the last three seasons—with 10 such concussions happening in 2020, 14 in ’21 and 19 last season.

The rule was a topic of discussion on a regularly scheduled conference call among the NFL’s 32 special teams coaches Monday. Two respected veteran special teams captains helped to take the lead from there, with one suggesting that they gather a special teams vet from every team to participate in opposing the rule. That led to a Wednesday night call that included 34 special teams players from across the NFL, with at least one from each of the 32 teams, and NFLPA officials dialed in as well.

Coaches on the Monday call unanimously felt that the rules change would do little to reduce concussions and actually could lead to unintended consequences that would lead to more injuries on kickoffs, and the special teams players largely agreed with that assessment. And the group gathered data that’s been shared with the league to back it up.

Last year, there were approximately 2,700 kickoffs, meaning that 99.3% of the plays were concussion free. Additionally, 11 of the 19 concussions happened when a return man took the ball out of the end zone, so the proposed rules change would have done nothing to prevent those. And just one of the 19 concussions was to the return man—one sustained by the Packers’ Keisean Nixon, when he was swung around and bounced his head off the turf.

Also, the coaches uniformly agreed that the muff rule (currently in place for fair catches on punts) would be a deterrent to fair-catching the ball inside the 10, anyway—because if a returner signaled at, say, the 3, and dropped the ball there, the return team couldn’t advance it past that point, creating a question of whether just returning it from there would be a better idea.

In mid-April, a group of about 10 coaches, one that included the Ravens’ John Harbaugh, traveled to the NFL Films campus in New Jersey to take a deeper dive into the rule change, as well as other rules proposals and injury initiatives. There, the unintended consequences of a rule change were discussed, too.

Most concern was raised as to the strategic counteraction to it, where more teams would squib kicks into the back lines. Another was that if analytically driven teams made the decision to fair-catch every kickoff as a result of the new rules, those teams would only see low liners or grounded kicks into the corners. All of which, as the coaches see it, would lead to more chaotic, unsettled situations and the kind of ugly football that creates higher-risk situations that would lead to players getting injured.

Another concern would be coaches instructing players to kick the ball high to the 15 or 20 and forcing the returner to make a decision. In such a circumstance, the cover team would still have to cover the kick, and the return team would still have to block to protect the return, so most of the collisions would still be happening, only they’d be happening in a smaller space. That, on paper. could have a phone booth effect, making them more frequent and violent.

The coaches think those sorts of risks far outweigh the minimal benefit that might come from the rule.

The NFL’s counter on this is data showing that concussions are two times more likely on kickoffs than run/pass plays; that the health and safety committee voted the proposal through unanimously and the competition committee went 8–0 with one abstention; and that the NCAA actually saw a drop in squib kicks (2.2% to 1.8%) when it put this rule in place in 2018 (NFL coaches feel that the differences between the game at the two levels, both in speed and disparity of talented between teams, make that an apples-to-oranges argument).

Also, the league has pointed out that fewer than 1% of kickoffs are muffed.

Regardless, there could be more change coming to the kickoff play in general, with the proposal calling for a one-year change and then a reassessment. Along those lines, three coaches I spoke to advocated for looking at the USFL kickoff—teams in the fledgling league kick off from the 25-yard line, with the idea being that the additional space creates fewer violent collisions and forces players to slow down approaching the point of attack. To this point, the small sample size on that style of kickoffs has produced really solid results from an injury standpoint.

All three coaches were also vehemently against the proposed kickoff touchback rule.

Among the head coaches backing the effort of the special teams coaches and players on their initiative have been Harbaugh, the Patriots’ Bill Belichick, Lions’ Dan Campbell and Broncos’ Sean Payton.

The proposal came at the March meeting with some concern over the liability that the uptick in concussions would put the league under, given the existing concussion litigation. A vote next week would coincide with another owner vote on the Thursday Night Football flex, which would allow for the league to move teams’ late-season games into weeknight windows and create more short weeks. That, of course, has raised player-safety concerns, too, and is another initiative the league has been aggressive on pushing through.

Some have wondered whether the kickoff rule is the shiny object the league will wield to show it cares about player safety, as the TNF changes are voted through.

It’ll take a three-quarters vote—meaning 24 teams would have to say yes—to approve the kickoff proposal. And a few days out, it looks like this one could be a very close call.