NFL owners voted to approve a new rule that could drastically change kickoffs for the upcoming 2025 season.
Next season, touchbacks will see the receiving team take possession at the 35-yard line, rather than the 30-yard line as was the case last season. The change is intended to persuade kicking teams to keep their kickoffs short of the goal line and thus result in a true kick return, rather than kicking the ball through the back of the end zone in what amounts to a dead play.
According to Denver Broncos special teams coach Darren Rizzi, the five-yard difference could result in the return rate more than doubling from last year’s 32.8% to somewhere between 70-75%.
"The space and the speed of the play were much more down from what we're all used to," Rizzi said, per ESPN’s Kevin Seifert. "And so the play was a tremendous success, and that's why we felt the time was now to move the touchback back to the 35 to go back to the original formation that we had proposed."
The NFL initially altered the kickoff rules out of safety concerns, altering where players are positioned at the start of the play to reduce the number of full-speed hits. That part of the rule appears to have worked—per ESPN, the concussion rate on kickoffs dropped 43% from 2023—but the rate of kickoff returns still has plenty of room to increase.`
With the kicking team now taking an extra five yards for failing to kick short of the end zone—and with the difference between a kick in the field of play and getting penalty for kicking out of bounds reduced from 10 yards to five—it is believed that kicking teams will be incentivized enough to keep the ball in play to drastically increase the number of returns we see.
We won’t know just how well the rule change actually works until we see it implemented next year, but given the confidence Rizzi has in how the game will be affected, it feels like a safe assumption that other special teams coaches across the league are looking at similar math.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as NFL Coach Predicts How New Kickoff Rules Will Impact Return Rate.
