The NFL’s new kickoff rule is one of the most significant changes to the NFL rulebook ever. One ramification of the XFL-style kickoff is the elimination of the surprise onside kick.
Teams now have to declare when they are attempting an onside kick. They get only two per game, and neither can take place before the fourth quarter.
“With this formation, there is no such thing as a surprise onside kick, because any kick that lands short of the landing zone is a no kick and the ball goes to the 40,” Competition Committee chairman Rich McKay said. “That ship has sailed. There are certainly great games, and we go back to the Super Bowl [XLIV when the Saints’ surprise] onside kick played a huge part. But we looked at the numbers, and last year, there are two attempts all year. So, it’s not a play that’s really in our game.
“What we did preserve is we got the onside kick in its current format, same lineup, same rules, same everything, and you can use it in the fourth quarter, and you can use it twice. So, if you’re trailing, and you say, ‘I want to just kick a traditional onside kick,’ you have that right under this rule.”
The Saints used an onside kick they called “Ambush” to start the second half of Super Bowl XLIV, while trailing the Colts 10-6, and ended up winning the game. But teams are only 2-for-15 in recovering the surprise onside kick the past five years.
“There was a little bit of pushback getting rid of that,” Saints special teams coach Darren Rizzi said. “Another one was something we use all the time is there is a little bit of strategical part to the kickoff at the end of the half and the end of the game where you may need to eliminate some time off the clock with a squib kick and things like that. That element of the game is gone, too.”
Owners voted down the Eagles’ onside kick alternative on Monday.
Under the Eagles’ proposal, teams that scored a touchdown or field goal could have followed it by taking the ball at their own 20-yard line, facing a fourth-and-20. If the scoring team converted the fourth-and-20, it would keep the ball and go from there.
“That might have been just a little bit too much for us to bite off at this point in time,” McKay said. “So, we went with the traditional onside kick and a brand-new hybrid kickoff. Do I think some type of change to the onside kick could happen in the future? I do, because I think as soon we took away the runoff on the kickoff . . . it’s become very hard to recover onside kicks.”
