A couple years ago, the kickoff looked like an endangered species in the NFL. The league moved kickoffs from the 30-yard line to the 35 in an attempt to encourage touchbacks, and Commissioner Roger Goodell was talking about potentially more radical changes to kickoffs in the future.
But a funny thing happened when the Competition Committee unveiled its new rules proposals for 2015: No changes to kickoffs have been proposed. Competition Committee Co-Chair Jeff Fisher said there haven’t been any discussions about further changes to kickoffs because the changes the league already made have resulted in kickoffs getting safer.
“There was no discussion,” Fisher said. “The numbers are down, the injury numbers are down, the concussion numbers are down. But no presentation or discussion from the standpoint of eliminating that [the kickoff].”
That’s a far cry from the attitude around the NFL a couple years ago, when Goodell was floating an idea to replace kickoffs with fourth-and-15 situations so that teams would punt rather than kicking off, or go for it on fourth-and-15 in place of an onside kick. That would have been a major change to the game, one that is no longer on the table in the NFL.