Through two games of the season, the much-hyped new kickoff rule is not looking so dynamic.
Just as the Chiefs and Ravens did on Thursday night, the Packers and Eagles generally kicked the ball deep into the end zone for touchbacks, and when the kickoffs were returned, not much yardage was gained.
Of the Packers and Eagles’ 13 kickoffs on Friday night in Brazil, 10 were touchbacks. The three that were returned averaged just 20.7 yards.
Similar numbers on Thursday night mean we’ve now had 24 kickoffs under the new rule with 19 touchbacks. That means 79 percent of kickoffs this season have been touchbacks. During the 2023 season, 74 percent of kickoffs were touchbacks. The point of the new rule was not to increase the number of touchbacks, but that’s what has happened.
The new rule was hyped as the “dynamic kickoff” because it was supposedly going to encourage returns, as it had done when first tried in the XFL. But a key change that the NFL made to the XFL rule was putting touchbacks on the 30-yard line, instead of the 35-yard line which the XFL used. So far, it appears that NFL teams are concluding the safe thing to do is just boot the ball deep and don’t risk letting it get returned. Perhaps if touchbacks went to the 35-yard line, teams would be more likely to kick short and try to pin the opposing returners deep.
The other point of the new rule was player safety, as there will be fewer high-speed collisions. Two games is simply not enough of a sample size to say whether the rule has succeeded on that front.
We’ll get a good look on Sunday at whether other teams try other kickoff strategies, and at whether some kickers struggle to kick the ball deep into the end zone consistently. But so far the results have not given fans the excitement that the new rule was supposed to provide.