The NFL’s dynamic kickoff is still evolving, and the preseason is a taste of what it could be.
In a conference call on football operations and player health and safety on Thursday with reporters around the league, representatives from the NFL dove into the modified kickoff, and how it has looked so far this preseason. While the return rate is up significantly, it’s still too early to tell if that will continue into the regular season.
Starting this season, a kick that lands in the end zone and is downed there or a kick that goes out of bounds behind the receiving team’s goal line will be placed at the 35-yard line as opposed to the 30-yard line like it was last season.
Last year, there was a 32.8% return rate around the league. In 2023, it was 21.8%.
Jeff Miller, NFL executive vice president overseeing player health and safety, said this year’s 5-yard shift is intended to up that number even more.
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“We still want to see that return rate increase,” Miller said.
The hope from teams, coaches and the competition committee is that the tweaked rule will “create an incentive for more kicks to be kicked into the landing zone,” Miller said.
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Bills kicker Tyler Bass waits to kick off to the Colts last season. Harry Scull Jr., Buffalo News
Through two weeks of the preseason, the return rate was just shy of 80% of kicks returned, Miller said. Still, that is by no means a certain forecast of the future.
“I don't think that's necessarily indicative of what will be in the regular season just based on statistics,” Miller said. “For example, last year through two weeks we were around 77% of kick returns. So certainly, the coaches and special-teams coaches are getting comfortable with it.
“Anecdotally, we've heard from coaches that we're going to see more kicks return this year and I think those numbers are going to be substantially higher than they were a year ago. Whether they stay at 79% and change, I guess we won't know until the regular season starts.”
The number also has to do with the coaches’ respective evaluation processes, noted Walt Anderson, NFL officiating rules analyst.
“We always have more returns during the preseason for obvious reasons,” Anderson said. “Very often the clubs are just looking at additional personnel from that standpoint.”
The Buffalo Bills, of course, have been using the preseason to evaluate the back end of the roster, an area where special teams come into major play.
As special-teams coordinator Chris Tabor takes on his first season with the Bills, he’s coming in with fresh eyes. After spending 2022 to 2023 with the Carolina Panthers, Tabor had a year off from the NFL. During that time, he soaked in all the film he could get his hands on. The Bills look to benefit from what he learned.
“I went from MACtion early in the week to college football, then to watching all the NFL stuff, but I was able to – on my time – really study the new kickoff/kickoff return rule,” Tabor said last month. “What are guys doing? What’s the trend? And then you get ideas, right?”
Now, Tabor is able to translate those ideas into action with the Bills.
During training camp, Tabor said the new kickoff was “a work in progress,” but he applauded certain aspects of it, primarily player safety.
“The league's done a nice job there,” Tabor said in July. “But there's some other things that you want to treat it like a kickoff return play, but then sometimes you venture into the punt return world. And then just covering the kick is different because there's not the space and the speed that you could build up like you used to. So, things are constricted. So, guys getting off the blocks and those type of things, a little trickier.”
Still, as Tabor watched, he saw the play not only evolve but improve.
“It's something I think that it's gotten better throughout the year,” he said. “You saw more returns, bigger returns. We're gonna see even more, I believe, just with the touchback going, what, to the 35 now.
“So, a lot more viewable plays, I guess, is how you would say it. So, we gotta be good there.”
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