A competition committee proposal to curb kickoffs has NFL coaches and players so red hot, their organized opposition forced a delay in Monday’s scheduled owners’ vote to Tuesday.
“I speak for both players and coaches alike who are heavily involved in special teams that this proposed kickoff rule change is not supported,” a player familiar with the conversations told the Daily News.
The proposed measure would allow teams to automatically receive a first down at their own 25-line if they fair-catch a kickoff or free kick behind their 25. The competition committee cited “player safety” as its reason for submitting and approving the change in March.
But several head coaches, and dozens of coordinators and assistant coaches and players, researched the plays in question together and recently organized to push back against the initiative.
Some of the coaches went as far as directly approaching their team’s owner to protest and state their case, which led to some owners reportedly speaking out against the proposal on Monday in Minneapolis at the spring owners meetings.
“The rule doesn’t address what they’re saying it addresses,” one coordinator told the News.
There is some concern that commissioner Roger Goodell and the competition committee could use the delay of the vote into Tuesday to change some no’s to yes votes and pass the measure. But there is also a sliver of hope that the recent push by coaches and players will help kill the proposal altogether.
“Very Strongly Against,” another coordinator texted the News.
Where did this proposal come from, why is it such a hot-button issue, and what is happening behind closed doors leading up to Tuesday’s possible vote? Here is the skinny:
WHY DID THE NFL PROPOSE IT?
The NFL’s 10-person competition committee, which includes Giants co-owner John Mara, cited player safety as the reason for suggesting this rule change. They noted an increase in concussions on kickoffs from 10 in the 2020 season, to 12 in 2021, to 19 in 2022, as mentioned by The MMQB’s Albert Breer, who first reported on the strong coach-player pushback.
However, coaches and players believe the unintended consequences of the proposed rule change would undermine its stated intent. They found that the 19 concussions in 2022, when studied in context, didn’t support the idea that this new rule would make the game safer. And many of them, frankly, question the football knowledge of those who believe it would.
“For the first time I can ever remember, you have coaches and players unanimously agreeing against a rule, and it is being completely ignored,” one coach said. “And they’re making a rule with no one in the room to actually speak for the game: coaches, GMs. Anybody.”
DEBATING THE SAFETY IMPACT
Coaches and players found that 11 of the 19 concussions on kickoffs last season happened when a return man took the ball out of the end zone, a play that wouldn’t be prevented by this new rule. They say only one of last year’s 19 kickoff concussions happened to a returner: the Packers’ Keisean Nixon.
And special teams coaches actually believe players could find themselves in just as many dangerous and unpredictable situations if not more based on how teams may adjust to the new rule.
Seeking an edge wherever they can find one, some special teams coordinators might resort more to squibbed and knuckled kicks that could set off unfamiliar and awkward collisions.
Others might try to kick the ball shorter and higher closer to the 20 and sprint their coverage team down to apply pressure. This could create higher-speed collisions in a shorter field area, since the coverage team wouldn’t have as much room to decelerate approaching the ball.
Regardless, some coaches were blown away to learn that the NFL’s doctors were proposing this kickoff rule in part because they said it was working in college football. And when the doctors were asked what data they were using to support that conclusion, they cited one season’s worth of information collected by the Pac-12 Conference, according to sources.
Not only is college football concussion data not kept or submitted in any uniform manner — if at all, in some places. College football’s protocols, and the speed and nature of the game, are sharply different from what takes place in the NFL.
SKEPTICISM, HYPOCRISY, TUA AND TNF
It’s difficult for a lot of coaches and players to buy that the NFL is prioritizing player health when it’s pushing through a flexing measure for Thursday Night Football and increasing some teams’ appearances on that short week to twice a season.
“Until we stop talking about flexing Thursday Night Football, now playing a 17-game schedule, more short weeks, and players not having full health insurance coverage for life, they should probably stop claiming that player safety is a priority,” one coach said.
It’s no secret that the NFL reacted to the mishandling of Miami Dolphins Tua Tagovailoa’s Week 3 concussion by enhancing its enforcement of concussion evaluations last season. And critics of the kickoff proposal believe the seven-concussion spike season over season corresponds to those increased protocols, not to anything extra dangerous happening on the field.
There is also skepticism that the NFL may be trying to pass this kickoff rule as a player safety public relations move, to be able to say they’re addressing player safety in response to critics of their Thursday Night Football flexing — which will add short weeks to some teams’ schedules with less than a month’s notice.
ASKING FOR TRUST
The Patriots’ Bill Belichick, the Lions’ Dan Campbell, the Ravens’ John Harbaugh and the Saints’ Sean Payton are among the head coaches throwing their full support behind the coordinators, assistants and players pushing back against the rule. The NFL Players’ Association also has gotten involved.
One player said, though, that players and coaches at a basic level are simply asking owners to trust their ability to improve the game’s safety themselves. He said they want the opportunity to correct the concussion spike by “emphasizing technique and holding ourselves accountable.”
The player said this just happened in 2018, when some other kickoff rules were tweaked for safety reasons, and injury numbers dropped drastically because coaches and players knew their “jobs depended on it.”
He said it will be no different in 2023 if coaches and players are given the chance to keep the kickoff play in the game and solve for the injury spike.
Interestingly, however, the News was told that players were in the process last week of crafting a statement to come out against the kickoff rule proposal as a group, but they were discouraged by some principles behind the scenes from doing so.
The politics of the NFL can be truly nauseating.
WHO IS ON THE COMPETITION COMMITTEE ANYWAY?
Glad you asked. The committee includes Atlanta Falcons president and CEO Rich McKay (chairman), Cincinnati Bengals executive VP Katie Blackburn, Miami Dolphins GM Chris Grier, Dallas Cowboys executive VP Stephen Jones, Mara, Baltimore Ravens executive VP Ozzie Newsome, Carolina Panthers head coach Frank Reich, Washington Commanders head coach Ron Rivera, Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin and Tennessee Titans head coach Mike Vrabel.
