For kickoffs to live on in the NFL, they must be safer in 2018

For the better part of a decade, the NFL has been chipping away at the kickoff — and for good reason. It has by far the highest incidence rate of concussions of any type of play in the sport.

In 2009, the league banned blocking wedges of three or more players on the return team, citing the high rate of injury of those either involved in the wedge or confronting it. Two years later, in an effort to increase touchbacks, the NFL moved the kickoff line from the kicking team’s 30-yard line to the 35. In 2016, touchbacks on kickoffs resulted in the return team starting with the ball on its own 25 instead of its own 20, creating further inducement for touchbacks instead of returns.

Indeed, touchbacks are plentiful, and kickoff returns are by and large less exciting. About 56 percent of all kickoffs in the NFL in 2017 were touchbacks. Whereas there were 25 kickoffs returned for touchdowns in 2007, there were just seven kickoff returns in 2017, the same total as 2016.

The problem is, while the NFL was willing to trade some measure of spontaneity for safety, it didn’t make kickoffs safe enough. An NFL concussion study conducted from 2015 to 2017 found that kickoffs were still responsible for 12 percent of all concussions sustained in the sport, giving kickoffs a concussion rate roughly four times higher than any other given play.

One of the chief issues facing the future of football is assuaging the public’s concerns about the long-term brain health of those who play the game. To make football safe, a fundamental change to the sport would be required. While eliminating kickoffs would lower the rate of concussions, and concussions are surely bad, it would accomplish little toward stopping the development of CTE in the brains of football players.

For now, however, the NFL is willing to settle for fewer concussions. To that end, team owners passed a slew of rule changes affecting kickoffs this spring. The changes include:

• No more running starts for coverage players.
• At least eight members of the return team are required to line up in the “setup zone” between the kicking team’s 45 and the receiving team’s 40 at the time of the kick. A maximum of three players can line up behind them.
• No wedge blocks are allowed at all.
• If a kickoff reaches the end zone and strikes the ground without touching a member of the receiving team first, it’s an automatic touchback.

Depending on whom you ask, the moves are either going to sharply reduce concussions or be more or less the same, at least for returners. As with prior changes to the kickoff rules, there is speculation that kicking teams will simply execute more high-arcing pooch kicks to take advantage of the gaps in coverage between the setup zone and the returners. That never came to pass on a consistent basis under previous rule changes, but no one will really know for sure until the 2018 season gets underway.

Teams made learning the new kickoff schematics a point of emphasis during minicamps. One Broncos safety said returners should be licking their chops. As far as safety is concerned, the league made the right moves, according to Denver head coach Vance Joseph. 

“It’s going to go to a safer play because it’s going to be manageable in the effect of having big skill on big skill,” Joseph told The Denver Post. “It won’t be offensive linemen blocking skill players. It’s going to be a speed and skill play now. It won’t be a wedge, aggressive double-team play. It’s going to be like a basketball play.”

Not everyone is convinced. For example, Steelers receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, who returned a kickoff for a touchdown in the season finale against the Browns, doesn’t foresee great things.