NFL Week 3
If the first two weeks of the NFL regular season are any indication, the kickoff has returned to relevance.
After a multi-year process, which included a redesign and experimentation in 2024, and additional tweaks during the past offseason, the play has regained prominence, with stats spiking league-wide and returns impacting the outcomes of games. Those results are exactly what the NFL’s competition committee and owners hoped for when they approved measures the last two offseasons to replace the traditional kickoff with what is now known as the “dynamic kickoff.”
As a refresher, as the NFL and its teams became more knowledgeable and data dependent in recent years, coaches — in an attempt to avoid the elevated risk of concussions and other serious injuries that occurred on the kickoff — began opting to have their kickers boom the ball out of the back of the end zones for touchbacks. By the conclusion of the 2023 season, the kickoff had largely become a ceremonial play, as the NFL saw a historically low 21.8 percent of kicks returned.
Last offseason, the NFL’s competition committee began looking for ways to make the kickoff safer and more relevant. A trio of special teams coaches, Richard Hightower (Chicago), Darren Rizzi (now with Denver) and John Fassel (now with Tennessee), spearheaded efforts to study the reimagined kickoff formation used by the XFL and tailor it to the NFL.
