The low-impact kickoff popularized in the XFL continues to be a consideration for the NFL, and league officials say they’re all ears if any other football league wants to suggest a better, safer kickoff.
Jeff Miller, the league’s executive VP who oversees health and safety, said today that the NFL is continuing to study the low-impact kickoff, in which 10 players on the kicking team and 10 players on the receiving team line up five yards apart, with no running starts and waiting until the returner has fielded the ball before they can make contact with each other.
“We’re studying that. Is that a feasible solution both from an injury perspective, as well as an opportunity to bring the kickoff more vibrantly back into the game?” Miller said.
The league continues to share what it finds when studying other kickoff proposals with teams, coaches and players to seek feedback on the best long-term solution to the NFL’s ongoing quest to make kickoffs safer.
This year, the NFL made one rule change, to encourage fair catches on kickoff returns. Adopting the low-impact kickoff would be a much more radical change, and perhaps a better one, both for player safety and for excitement.
