The National Football League (NFL) introduced new kickoff rules in 2024 called the “dynamic kickoff.” The new rules changed the alignment of the kicking team and the receiving team and introducing a “landing zone” between the receiving team’s goal line and 20 yard line. The new rules also changed onside kicks. Instead of a team choosing an onside kick whenever they want, only the trailing team can decide to attempt an onside kick in the fourth quarter after informing the officials. Additionally, fair catches in the landing zone isn’t allowed, and touchbacks are differentiated by those that land in the endzone from those that roll into the end zone.
In sum, there are a lot of changes. I had a hard time keeping track of all of the different kickoff outcomes, so I made a chart and compared the new kickoff rules to those in preceeding eras differentiated by rule changes.
At first, I found the idea of a landing zone to be strange. Then I remembered that other sports have “landing zones” for serves. Tennis and badminton, for example, only allow serves to land in a portion of the court. In badminton, the birdie is either in or out. In tennis, the ball is in or out but with a twist: the server gets another try if their first serve is out of bounds. Additionally, a tennis serve that hits the net is “out” while the ball can hit the net in other plays. Tennis serving rules aren’t nearly as intricate as NFL kickoff rules and they weren’t designed to minimize injuries, but in other ways the two sports are not dissimilar.
I reviewed data from the first two weeks of games and compared the numbers to previous eras of kickoffs that were shaped by different rule changes. For more reading, The Upshot on the New York Times summarizes these different kickoff eras.
I made a few observations:
- There are more returns under the new NFL kickoff rules but not by much: 30.2% this year vs. 21.8% in 2023. This year’s return rate is lower than all previous years except 2023. It is lower than the return rate of 37.5% in 2022, and it is far lower than the return rate of 80.4% in 2009-10.
- The NFL’s website does not report statistics on kickoffs that land in the endzone vs. those that roll into the endzone. They are all captured as “touchbacks” despite now having different outcome. I hope they can harmonize their data with the new rules.
- Injury rates have motivated the new kickoff rules, however, injury rates are not reported on the NFL’s website.
- The percentages in the chart above are absolute. The conditional fumble rate of the kickoffs that were returned has decreased over time from 2.7% in 2010 to 1.5% in 2023.
- Over time, 0.78% of returned kickoffs were returned for touchdowns, and this has been stable over time. In his first two seasons in the NFL, Devon Hester returned 7.8% of his kickoff returns for touchdowns. This is an order or magnitude more than a typical returner and is simply astounding.
- The onside kick success rate has decreased from 22% in 2009 to 5% in 2023. We will have to see how this changes now that teams have to inform the officials of their intent to initiate an onside kick. So far, 0 of 3 onside kick attempts were successful for the kicking team.
What do you think of the new kickoff rules in the NFL?