Even though their 2025 season was a success overall, the New England Patriots entered the offseason intent on improving several areas that ultimately fell short of expectation the previous year. One of those was kickoff return.
While they were tops in the league in punt return average, in large part due to Marcus Jones continuing to play at a Pro Bowl level, their kickoff runbacks were far less successful. Despite using seven different returners, New England finished only 19th in the NFL with an average of 25.5 yards per runback.
During last week’s season opener against the Seattle Seahawks, that number jumped to 26.8. Despite this being the smallest of all possible sample sizes, head coach Mike Vrabel saw some positives.
“I thought Kyle \[Williams\] had a couple decent returns,” he told reporters during a press conference on Monday.
“Reggie \[Gilliam\] — that’s been a strength of his, whether he’s playing at the front line, whether he’s playing as an off returner. So, hopefully we can clean some of those things up. I thought Kyle ran decisively. It didn’t look timid. The timing of all these plays, it’s so critical that the returners can judge it, get moving into the football and not be backing up with their hips going back, and then they catch the ball; now the coverage has already started and the timing’s off.”
The Patriots started their 2025 campaign with Antonio Gibson as their primary returner, but a torn ACL forced the team to change plans. Efton Chism, D’Ernest Johnson, TreVeyon Henderson, Terrell Jennings and even Rhamondre Stevenson received opportunities to run back kicks, as did Kyle Williams.
The latter, together with practice squad running back Lan Larison, filled that role last Wednesday. Williams only ran back two kicks, but he gained exactly 29 yards on both of them — a 2.6-yard improvement compared to his 2025 regular season average — and added 0.8 expected points for his team.
For the 2025 third-round draft pick, the jump from his rookie season to his sophomore campaign is more than just statistical.
“It’s just a comfortability with the new kickoff,” he explained at his locker on Monday. “You come from college, and you don’t really do too much special teams in college. So, being able to transition to do that in the league and going into the second year, it’s a lot more comfortability for where I can hit those gaps. …
“I know what I’m looking for. I know where my track should be. I know where my blocks are going to be set up at. And so, when you are able to know that, your running style is able to transition. It makes things a lot easier.”
Whether or not Williams will remain the Patriots’ primary kickoff returner with fellow wide receiver A.J. Brown now on injured reserve remains to be seen. Either way, despite the positive start, his head coach still sees the potential to get better as well.
2There’s just a lot of things that we can continue to improve as far as starting back there with how we catch it, and then obviously the matchups and the angles that get created on that play,” said Mike Vrabel.
“There was one where we had some confusion which is unfortunate. You can’t have free runners on the kickoff. That’s not something that you want to do. That’s not good for player safety and welfare. But I felt like there are some glimpses there that we could get going.”