Last season, the NFL made a drastic change to its kickoff format, rolling out the dynamic kickoff in an attempt to both encourage more kickoff returns and limit the number of injuries that occur on kickoffs. While those goals have been achieved, it has seemingly created a new problem that the league would like to solve.
While kickoff returns are up since the rollout of the new dynamic kickoff, onside kick recoveries are down.
As Pro Football Talk points out, just three of 50 attempts were successful last season, and only one of the 21 tried this season has been recovered by the kicking team. Those numbers do not seem to be high enough for the NFL.
Currently, teams are allowed to attempt an onside kick at any time, but they must declare beforehand that they are kicking an onside kick, eliminating any element of surprise.
On Tuesday, NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent suggested that the league could look to reconsider some onside kick alternatives since the number of successful recoveries has been so low.
“When you start getting a less than five percent recovery rate, now that we’ve seen what has happened with the dynamic kickoff, it may be time for the membership to revisit some of those things that may be out of the ordinary,” Vincent said, via Stephen Whyno of the [Associated Press](https://apnews.com/article/nfl-kickoffs-owners-meeting-d1b40461b4c0a5a1311a620d1bad5410).
Back in 2024, a proposal to replace the onside kicks with a 4th-and-20 play was voted down. However, based on Vincent’s comments, it sounds like there’s a chance that the proposal could be revisited during the offseason.