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You Can’t Preach Tush Push “Health and Safety” While Changing the Rules to Incentivize More Kickoff Returns
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NFL ownership voted on Tuesday at the Annual League Meeting to continue to utilize the dynamic kickoff, while moving the ball spot on touchbacks from the 30-yard line to the 35-yard line for kicks sent into the end zone, NFL Network Insiders Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero reported.
The league debuted the dynamic kickoff on a one-year trial for the 2024 season with the goal of injecting life into what had essentially become a ceremonial play while also preserving player health and safety. The results in 2024 were a success. The league saw 332 more kickoff returns, bumping the previous 21.8% return rate up to 32.8%. There were also 59 big-play returns (returns of 40 or more yards) last season, which was the highest figure since 2016.
“The play was a tremendous success,” Broncos special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi, who helped craft the dynamic kickoff, said Tuesday. “The injury rates were much, much lower. Obviously the space and the speed of the play were down from what we’re all used to, and so the play was a tremendous success.
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By improving field position for teams on the receiving end of touchbacks, the league hopes teams will be deterred from kicking the ball into the end zone, which could lead to more returns in the 2025 season and beyond.
Okay. So return rates are up. There are fewer injuries in the new configuration. Now they tweak the rules to incentivize more returns, which… increases the chances that injuries can occur. Mind you, the injury rate does not increase, but the volume of reps does, leading to a larger sample of returns to which a certain percentage is applied.
Bear with me here as I attempt to craft a tush push hypocrisy argument. Even though the Packers’ proposal to ban the play was tabled, a number of teams were ready to approve it because of “health and safety” reasons even without supporting data. They were giving us a fugazi argument that MAYBE there would be injuries in the future if the play remained legal.
Obviously you cannot hold that stance and then vote “yes” on these kickoff changes at the same time. Why? Well let’s do some math. According to another article at NFL.com:
- The new rule slowed the average player speeds, as intended, which led to a lower concussion rate (down 43% vs. 2021-23 average) and the fewest lower extremity strains on the play since at least 2018
- Shorter distances and fewer high-speed efforts reduced the incidence of lower extremity strains by 48% on that play alone.
Furthermore, ESPN’s Kevin Seifert reported that:
“the injury rate on the new kickoff was the same as on other plays from scrimmage. Historically the injury rates on kickoffs has been 2-4 times that of all other plays. Concussion rate on kickoffs dropped 43%, per NFL’s Jeff Miller”
Right, so let’s say, for the sake of the exercise, that the injury rate on all NFL plays, kickoff included, is 3%. Let’s just make that our arbitrary number. And we’ll say that one season you have 1,000 kickoff returns, now incentivized, which increases to 1,250. Under the 2024 rules, 3% of 1,000 kickoffs is 30 injuries. Now it’s 3% of 1,250 kickoffs, or 37.5 injuries. The rate is unchanged, but you’ve increased the likelihood of injury by creating a situation where touchbacks are swapped for returns.
So here’s the thing – for the NFL, it’s obviously about reaching an acceptable threshold of injury, not eliminating it entirely. Because you can’t. It’s football. Players will get hurt and sometimes they’ll do it without contact, maybe an ACL tear while trying to cut on the Sod Father’s Super Bowl field. But you can’t spin one narrative about the tush push and preach preventative health and safety, then turn around and tweak the kickoff rule one year after it did what it was intended to do, which was reduce injuries. That’s hypocrisy. Mixed messaging. If you want to cut down on injuries, cut down on injuries. What they’ve essentially done here is said, “we lowered the injury rate on returns, now we feel comfortable seeing more of them.” That’s antithetical to the original goal.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com