How the NFL’s new kickoff rules will change the game in the 2024 season

“It’s a learning process for all of us — the clubs, the players, the coaches, the officials as well as the fans,” Walt Anderson, the NFL’s officiating rules analyst, said last week. “So far, the feedback has been very positive. … Obviously the two objectives going into this was to make the kickoff safer and to make the kickoff more relevant, to incentivize the return. So far the returns, no pun intended there, on both of those have been favorable.”

The NFL has spent years attempting to fix the kickoff — which it called the sport’s most dangerous play, with an injury rate several times that for plays from the line of scrimmage. The elevated rate of concussions, in particular, has threatened to eventually result in the play being removed from the sport entirely.

The league’s temporary fix last season was to reduce injuries on kickoffs simply by reducing the number of kickoffs that were returned, with a rule that allowed the returning team to take possession of the ball at the 25-yard line with a fair catch of any kickoff inside the 25. That succeeded in curbing concussions.

But it also made the kickoff, the league conceded, a dead, ceremonial play. Only 22 percent of kickoffs were returned during the 2023 regular season. In an otherwise memorably compelling Super Bowl in which the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in overtime, all 13 kickoffs resulted in touchbacks.

“And that, at this point, was just a frustration for a lot of people in the football world, specifically the competition committee, to try to find a way to bring the kickoff back into the game,” Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president of communications, public affairs and policy, said during the preseason.

The league hopes this season’s solution is far more effective and lasting. The rulemaking competition committee devised the new format, with input from teams’ special teams coaches. Team owners ratified the proposal in March on a one-year basis. The intent is to meaningfully increase returns while having an injury rate more comparable to that of a play from the line of scrimmage.

It amounts to one of the most significant rule changes in NFL history, in part because it looks so different and will require fans to adjust to what they’re seeing.

The alignment draws heavily from the XFL version of the kickoff and is visually jarring to any observer seeing it for the first time. The kicker lines up in the usual spot but is alone on that half of the field. The other 10 players on the kicking team begin on the other side of the field, lined up only five yards from the nearest blockers on the receiving team. The idea is to eliminate the long run down the field by the kicking team and thereby reduce the number of high-speed, unusually violent collisions.

The returning team can have as many as two returners. The kick must fall in the “landing zone” between the goal line and the 20-yard line. The tacklers on the kicking team and the blockers on the receiving team can’t move until the ball hits the ground or is touched by a returner. From there, the play is designed to resemble a play from the line of scrimmage.

The surprise onside kick has been eliminated by the new rules. A team still can attempt an onside kick while trailing in the fourth quarter. In that case, that team must declare its intention and the alignment reverts to the traditional kickoff setup.

Under the new rules, the ball will be placed at the 30-yard line after a kick into the end zone. That was a key consideration for the designers of the revised rules, who project a return rate of 55 to 60 percent. It would have been 85 to 90 percent, they have said, if the rules had called for the ball to be spotted at the 35-yard line on a touchback, as originally planned, to provide an even greater disincentive to kicks into the end zone.

The touchback spot could be tweaked in the future, perhaps next offseason. In the short term, league leaders have said repeatedly in recent weeks that they don’t expect an in-season change to the touchback spot.

Kicks short of the landing zone will be spotted, like kicks out of bounds, at the 40-yard line. A kick that falls in the landing zone must be returned.

In training camp, Danny Smith, the veteran special teams coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers, pushed back on the notion that kicking teams might make a regular habit of launching the ball into the end zone to avoid returns, simply allowing opponents to take the ball at the 30-yard line.

“You have that option,” Smith said. “But the 30 is not good field position for a kicking team. And with that in mind, we think we can do better than that.”

The leaguewide return rate during the preseason was 70.5 percent.

“We always know that things are different in the preseason relative to the regular season because none of the clubs are going to show you all their cards in the preseason,” Anderson said. “They’re going to hold some things back.”

Strategies will emerge. Hang time on kickoffs no longer matters, since tacklers and blockers are stationary until the ball reaches the returner or hits the ground. A bouncing, difficult-to-handle kick could become a major asset. Some teams could have a non-kicker take the kickoff, permitting another capable tackler to be on the field. Any kickers who take the kickoff themselves could be pressed into more regular tackling duties.

Atlanta Falcons kicker Younghoe Koo made a tackle on a kickoff during a preseason game in Baltimore. After that game, Falcons Coach Raheem Morris said: “He did make a great tackle on the first kickoff. I don’t want to see him do that ever again.”

Big plays and long returns are expected. Returning teams could get creative and utilize reverses or across-the-field laterals.

“I feel like I’ve got a great handle on it,” Smith said at the Steelers’ training camp. “I really do. I love it. It’s in. The expectations don’t change. I’m expecting us to excel at it. I really do. We’ve worked it hard. We’ve tried a lot of different things. There will be changes and adjustments because it’s new to everybody along the way. But we’re well prepared for it. I’m anxious for it.”

The NFL has high hopes for the new format. The league has come to refer to it as the “dynamic” kickoff after initially calling it the “hybrid” kickoff. Smith said his Steelers players are entirely on board.

“I am sold on it,” Smith said. “So I have sold them on it and they are fully bought in. They are excited about the challenges of it. These guys want challenges, too.”