7-22-23 Bo Crouch, Host of Football Talk
The league has changed many rules over the years touting player safety as they take some of the physicality out of the game. Some of these rule changes make a ton of sense when you start hearing about concussions and the link to CTE for instance getting rid of the wedge on kick returns where your 180 pound gunners are running into 300 pound linemen at full speed as a wedge breaker or crack back blocks. Eliminating both of those made sense based on the frequency and severity of the injuries that came from those hits. Similarly protecting the receivers as they catch the ball across the middle although I personally think that basically give the offense a completion most of the time I understand but this new rule doesn't create a sizeable enough safety impact to essentially almost get rid of a complete phase of the game. The kickoff in general has suffered a lot of these rule changes over the years whether it was moving the kickoff location up from the 30 to the 35 which has increased the number of touchbacks as kickers have evolved over the years. Having a touchback come out to the 25 instead of the 20 further incentivizes players to not run it out of the endzone. Making it so your kickoff team has to be set instead of running up with the kicker which also encourages your kicker to blast it out of the endzone. This rule also made a low percentage play in the onside kick even harder to recover. Now the new rule of a fair catch will bring the ball out to the 25 as well so this will take some strategy of a towering kick in homes to pin them deep out of the equation too. This rule change depending on the report you read has a max benefit of maybe 8% less injury potential. The thing that it could affect more than anything is you may miss some players that were either found because of their special teams play or they were mostly just a specialist in that way. For example, the most dynamic returner in Devin Hester who did play in the offense, but his primary use was as a return man. Leon Washington comes to mind another great returner and again was mostly used for this purpose. Percy Harvin had his most famous return during the Seahawks Super Bowl against the Broncos where you saw that entire sideline deflate after that halftime return. and most recently Budda Baker started his career in Arizona on special teams as part of the coverage team something that pushed his career forward faster being named 1st team all pro as a special teamer. He has gone on to 5 Pro Bowl appearances in his 6 years and an All pro nod at Safety all of which could be missed without what special teams provides. Then you look at the game play aspect of games that have been decided by an amazing return or a forced fumble on kickoff that complete change the game. Fortunately this is a 1 season trial and I personally am hoping that it doesn't become a permanent fixture of the rule book
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