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Kevin Seifert, ESPN Staff Writer
In the NFL’s first game of the 2024 preseason, the Houston Texans and Chicago Bears combined for eight kickoffs in the annual Hall of Fame Game. Seven of them were returned and only one went for a touchback, a clear demonstration of the potential effectiveness of the league’s new kickoff alignment.
With two-thirds of the preseason complete, however, a more nuanced view of the rule change has emerged. Of the 10 kickoffs in the Minnesota Vikings’ Week 2 game at the Cleveland Browns, for example, six resulted in touchbacks. Only three were returned.
Preseason outcomes of any kind should always be measured against coaches’ instincts to cloak strategy until the regular season. But there has been a fair amount of genuine experimentation in anticipation of a rule that has the potential to add 1,000 additional plays to the regular season and significantly change the average starting position of drives.
Let’s take a closer look at what we’ve learned so far from teams’ approach to the new alignment, as well as several other new rules and policies for the 2024 season.
The kickoff: No longer a dead play
Despite some game-by-game variance, the overall trend this summer has been clear. After NFL teams combined to return 22% of kickoffs and allow 73% to end in touchbacks in the 2023 regular season, here’s what has happened leaguewide in the 2024 preseason:
Keep in mind that kickoffs were typically returned at higher rates in the preseason than during the regular season under the old rule. But even so, this summer’s return rate is up notably from 63% at this point in 2023.
The average return has gone for 25 yards, leading to an average drive start following kickoffs at the 28.3-yard line. For context, in the first two weeks of the 2023 preseason, the average drive start following kickoffs was the 23.9-yard line.
That increase has come with more variance as well. About 20% of drives after a kickoff have started inside the 20-yard line, 41% between the 21 and 30 and 36% beyond the 30.
The increase in total returns has led to more big plays with 11 returns of at least 40 yards, compared to six at this point last preseason.
But there was a notable increase in balls hit into the end zone, from 30% in Week 1 to 40% in Week 2. (Nearly two-thirds of kickoffs have landed in the area between the 20-yard line and the goal line known as the “landing zone.” There have been a handful of miskicks that resulted in a penalty and the ball being spotted at the 40-yard line; seven kickoffs have landed short of the 20-yard line; and one has gone out of bounds.)
The new rule spots a touchback at the 30-yard line, sparking questions about whether coaches might ultimately choose the certainty of a touchback rather than the likely variance of a return. Dawn Aponte, the league’s chief football administrative officer, said Monday that it is “unlikely” that the league will move the touchback further up to further disincentivize kickoffs and said any other potential tweaks would come in the next 7 to 10 days as opposed to during the regular season.
As expected, kickers have been involved in more tackles. They’ve been credited with an assist or solo tackle roughly once in every four games, compared to the 2023 regular-season rate of once in every 15 games.
Vikings special teams coordinator Matt Daniels said last week that starters have approached him about getting involved in kickoff and kickoff return coverage, which now is more similar to offense vs. defense play.
“The funny thing about it is that the more and more you work this new dynamic kickoff,” Daniels said, “you realize how creative you can get. You realize the can of worms it can open up and how much of a week-to-week personnel change it can really be. On one end you get really, really excited. But at the other end, you can get a little bit timid at the same time, too.”
Asked how much of his creativity would be on display in last Saturday’s preseason game against the Browns, Daniels smiled and said: “100% of it. All of it, it’s going to be out there.”
Five of the Vikings’ seven kickoffs that day went into the end zone. Four ended in touchbacks, and the Browns returned three.
The hip-drop tackle: Nothing to see here (yet)
NFL owners’ decision to ban the hip-drop tackle caused considerable consternation among former and current players and coaches, whose concerns ranged from what a legal tackle would look like moving forward to whether officials would be able to identify infractions in real time. Those understandable worries overshadowed a number of expected mitigating factors, including strong indications from NFL officials that fouls would likely be identified by the league office — and result in warning letters or fines — in postgame reviews rather than through flags.
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Goodell and McAfee discuss player safety and new hip-drop tackle rule
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell joins Pat McAfee to discuss new tackle rules for the coming season.
The league has followed the same approach it uses to enforce the helmet rule, first introduced in 2018, that prohibits players from making forcible contact with their helmet or face mask. That likely explains why there has not been a single flag thrown for a hip-drop tackle during the preseason. If and when a penalty occurs, fans watching the game are going to be unlikely to realize it, as officials likely use a generic identification when announcing it. (Use of helmet penalties are now announced as “unnecessary roughness” or “personal foul.”)
Another reason the hip-drop flag has been largely invisible is that the rule is written to address only the most obvious way it can be visible: When a player “unweights himself by swiveling and dropping his hips and/or lower body, landing on and trapping the runner’s leg(s) at or below the knee.” In other words, the player must leave his feet as leverage to bring down the ball carrier for it to qualify as a foul. If the player stays on his feet, or on the ground, and tries to drag down an opposing player with the same technique, it will remain a legal tackle attempt.
New helmet models more popular than Guardian Caps
After two years of limited use, the NFL expanded its training camp mandate for Guardian Caps — foam padding that attaches to the exterior of helmets — to all positions except quarterbacks and specialists. And, for the first time, it allowed players to wear them during games.
As part of that rule change, the NFL and the NFL Players Association agreed to exempt any players who wear one of six helmet models that they said provide equal or better protection than Guardian Caps. Roughly 200 players have switched to one of those models this summer, according to Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president for communications, public affairs and policy.
Meanwhile, a handful of players have used Guardian Caps in preseason games.
The Guardian Cap mandate is focused on training camp and preseason practices because prior research showed a disproportionate amount of concussions were suffered during that period in previous years.
Quiet preseason on the replay front
The NFL is continuing its slow expansion of replay this season. Specifically, it will allow replay officials to review two new aspects of game play: whether a passer is down by contact or out of bounds before a throw, and if the game clock has expired before a snap.
There are no indications that either option has been used this summer, but in a larger sense, they represent the league’s current approach to replay. Owners have resisted calls to make all plays reviewable. Nor have they wanted to review penalty flags, except for a one-year experiment in 2019 with pass interference. Instead, they are slowly adding to the menu as warranted, while also using the video assist program — replay officials quickly communicating a mistake to the referee — to address clear and obvious circumstances to reverse a call.