NFL's new kickoff rules aim to maintain safety while bringing back 'game's most exciting play'

When XFL commissioner Oliver Luck met with Turner Broadcasting in the fall of 2018, he was hoping to secure a broadcast partner for the fledgling league. He promised excitement. He promised to “reimagine football” through a series of structural changes that included new kickoff rules.

The problem? The architect of those new rules hadn’t yet put those changes into anything remotely resembling a proper presentation.

“I didn’t have enough time to put it in PowerPoint or anything so I gave him Sweet’N Low, Splenda and sugar packets to set it up on the field because that’s what we were using as our mock version of it,” said Sam Schwartzstein, who was Andrew Luck’s center at Stanford and later became the XFL’s director of football operations, innovation and strategy.

Splenda packets represented the kicking team. Sweet’N Low packets represented the returning team. Sugar was the football.

“He brought a cup full of them while I worked on the PowerPoint back in the office,” Schwartzstein said. “I don’t remember the executive, but when we finally sent the PowerPoint back he said, “You’re right, this is much better than the sugar packets.’”

When the NFL’s regular season kicks off in Kansas City on Thursday, Schwartzstein’s confection will be the first play that anybody sees. The league has tweaked the original concept after input from the NFL Competition Committee and special teams coordinators Darren Rizzi (New Orleans Saints), John Fassel (Dallas Cowboys), and Richard Hightower (Chicago Bears), but the brunt of the innovation remains.

The hope is that the new set-up will accomplish the NFL’s threefold goals.

“This play will reduce injuries and increase excitement,” Schwartzstein said, “and it keeps the kickoff in the game.”

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Under the NFL’s new rules, which are explained in full via this link, everyone but the kicker and return men must remain stationary until the ball is caught or hits the ground in what is known as the landing zone between the 20-yard line and the goal line. The teams are lined up five yards apart at the return team’s 40- and 35-yard line, respectively.

Seven players from the receiving team must have their foot on the 35-yard line. The receiving team can also have two more players who are in the setup zone, but who aren’t touching the 35-yard line. Those two players will be lined up outside the hashes. Finally, the receiving team may employ one or two return men. If the team decides to use just one returner, the extra player must line up in the set-up zone between the 30- and 35-yard line.

If the kickoff doesn’t make it past the return team’s 20-yard line, the kick is considered out of bounds and the return team will get possession at its own 40-yard line. If the ball is kicked out of bounds, the receiving team will again get the ball at its own 40 or the spot where the ball went out of bounds.  

If the ball is kicked into the end zone on the fly, or out of the back of the end zone, the receiving team will be awarded a touchback at its own 30-yard line, up from the previous spot at the 25.

When the new rules were instituted, reactions were mixed. NFL coaches admitted to feeling uncomfortable. Return men were licking their chops.

“This thing is totally different from anything we’ve ever coached,” Arizona Cardinals special teams coordinator Jeff Rodgers said during OTAs. “There’s still blocking and tackling going on, but the space and the angles [in which] you’re trying to get those things done are vastly different than they were before. 

“I’ve got 20-plus years of looking at this play a certain way. I don’t know how much of that stuff translates. I think I do, but when we get into the preseason and you start getting these things in pads, everything has to be reevaluated from what you’re asking the guys to do technique-wise to what you’re asking them to do schematically.”

Cardinals receiver and return man Greg Dortch sees big-play potential.

“I think there’s tons of opportunities for me to be explosive and make plays,” he said. “You don’t have guys running down full speed. It doesn’t start until I either catch the ball or the ball hits the ground so that’s kind of an advantage to me.

“The game’s a little bit slower and everybody’s at like one level so should you break past that first level, it’s just you and the kicker. I’ll take my chances.”

NFL teams each had three weeks and three preseason games to get a better understanding of the rules and the possibilities, but Schwartzstein said the data set is problematic when trying to form meaningful judgments. He said that 48 preseason games is an OK sample, but aside from the vanilla play calling most NFL teams employ in the preseason, many teams sat their starters in those games so it’s difficult to gauge what is possible.

“The unknown is what everybody is excited for,” Bears special teams coordinator Richard Hightower said. “I know the players are extremely excited about it. I know we’re extremely excited to coach it and see what it is to be a part of something that’s basically revolutionizing the game.”

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The NFL cited safety as the impetus for previous changes to the kickoff. Kickoffs produced an inordinate amount of the NFL’s concussions over the years in which data was tracked. A rule change in 2011 reduced the distance from the kickoff to the opposing end zone and the NFL reported that concussions during kickoffs were reduced by 40 percent.

The problem was that the number of returns also dropped dramatically, removing a signature play from the game. There were 1,970 touchbacks on kickoffs last season. These rules changes attempt to satisfy both the safety and boredom concerns.

“Last year when I watched football, I was like, ‘Why kick it at all?'” said Brian Mitchell, the NFL’s all-time leader in kickoff return yardage with 14,014. “If they would just go back to the old way of doing it, I’d love it even more, but the fact that they’re bringing it back where 85 to 90 percent of the time it can be returned? I respect the fact that they are trying to bring back probably the most exciting play in all of football.”

Mitchell sees myriad possibilities within the NFL’s new rules, including the type of personnel that teams employ.

“In the past, the guys blocking had to be very good in open space so the guys covering had an advantage,” he said. “With these new rules, the guys that are blocking, if they can just hold their block for a second with the returner having the ability to be able to take steps before the other guys move, that creates an advantage.

“And the covering guys can’t just avoid people now. What that does is it makes the returner have to be more of a running back-style player where he can break tackles. I’m thinking that running backs will have more of a chance of having success than the smaller guys. The smaller guys who got more open space with the old rule didn’t have to worry about breaking tackles.”

Schwartzstein said his data back those assertions.

“What you saw a lot of early in the preseason was the return team retreating backwards, and that’s what’s creating these shorter returns,” he said. “That’s going to change as teams learn. You’re already in the spot where you initially would make contact so there’s no need to retreat. We even found that offensive line coaches turned out to be the best coaches for the return scheme because they’re just teaching normal offensive line blocking schemes.

“Look at the Houston Texans in week one of the preseason. They were looking backwards on returns. Now they’re not. The Colts are no longer retreating on returns. Teams adapt over time, not just total games. It’s why I tested rules over multiple weeks with different people, and with new video each time. I wanted to try and get new, fresh eyes on new film.”

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Before Schwartzstein and the XFL rolled out their kickoff rules, they tested them with Mississippi junior college teams at Pearl River College and Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College.

“JUCO coaches are some of the most creative people when it comes to new ideas so that was where we started this breeding ground of ideas and feedback,” he said. “As we brought on more coaches, we tested with different minor leagues in short studies where we’d spend three days there, let the coaches think about it, and then come back in 14 days to see how they felt.”

Ultimately, Schwartzstein built a massive database and a predictive model from that testing and more than 400 kicks in the 2020 XFL season. Among his findings from the XFL season:

• 93 percent of kickoffs were returned.
• About 3 percent resulted in touchdowns, which is in keeping with the current NFL average.
• Offensive plays were reduced by six plays per game because time ran off the clock with each kickoff instead of the clock stopping for touchbacks.
• There were zero concussions: “I had one player get hurt in over 1,000 plays,” Schwartzstein said. “He had an ankle injury but he got tended to on the field, the trainers came off and he came back in the game.”

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What lies ahead for the NFL remains to be seen, but Schwartzstein is certain that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s coming in the return game, whether it’s in blocking schemes, kickoff depth, body types, or trick plays.

“You will see a lot of diversity and strategy involved in the play, ” he said. “[After watching the preseason] you might be like, ‘I’m seeing the same thing happen every time where a guy runs up the middle, but, man, wait until these teams start showing their cards. Wait until Tyreek Hill is back there returning, or Xavier Worthy, or Saquon Barkley.”

In the meantime, normally risk averse NFL coaches are pulling their hair out trying to figure out which approach works best.

Broncos coach Sean Payton and his staff are thinking about blocking schemes.

“Is it a zone scheme or are we going to pin and pull?” he said.

His special teams coach, Ben Kotwica, is thinking about field position.

“There is an advantage if you can kick the ball in the landing zone on the ground; that’s that unconventional kick,” he said. “So how much does that become the norm? That would be number one. Then number two is on the return side, where is the starting field position after the ball is returned?

“The subtle yet substantial change where the touchback went from the 35-[yard line] to the 30-[yard line] is going to make a difference. If teams are returning the ball out to the 36, 37-[yard line], you may get back to square one where kicking a touchback to the 30-[yard line] is more beneficial. So those are two elements that will be played out.”

Eagles special teams coordinator Michael Clay is thinking about personnel types such as the return man.

“It could be a small guy. It could be a guy going downhill,” he said. “With this new rule, it gives us an opportunity to be creative and gives us an opportunity to bring back the play instead of just putting the ball down at the 25. It’s just excitement and curiosity really going forward.”

Whatever comes, Schwartzstein and Mitchell suggest that NFL fans settle into their seats before the ball goes in the air, lest they miss something special.

“You have a bigger chance of a big play, and I believe that that’s gonna bring excitement back into the game,” Mitchell said. “Being good in two phases won’t win it in football now. Three phases will win it, and if a team goes down and scores and you have an effective person back there returning the next kickoff you can erase that other team’s momentum immediately.”

Mitchell laughed when asked how the new rules might have impacted his career.

“I might have 3,000 or 4,000 more yards,” he said. “Let’s be real right now. If you break through that first wave as a returner, what else you got? A kicker? C’mon, man!”

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Top photo via Getty Images: A view of the opening kickoff of an XFL game between the DC Defenders and the Vegas Vipers at Audi Field on March 12, 2023 in Washington, DC.

CHGO’s Adam Hoge and Nicholas Moreano, DNVR’s Zac Stevens and PHLY’s Zach Berman contributed to this story.

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