When Patriots coach Bill Belichick was asked last month about the latest attempt to make the kickoff return safer by having fewer of them, he didn’t say much. (Shocker.) But it was clear that he agrees with the viewpoints of coaches who don’t like the change.
The latest tweak, a reaction to the unintended consequence of moving the touchback point from the 20 to the 25, is aimed at giving teams the ability to use a fair catch and take the ball at the 25 when a team deliberately kicks short of the end zone in order to force a return.
Teams that want to force a return will now use squib kicks. Via Mike Reiss of ESPN.com, Patriots kickers Nick Folk and Chad Ryland spent time after Friday’s practice working on squib kicks.
“Special teams coaches across the NFL figure to experiment with different possibilities on kickoffs this offseason, and Joe Judge has emerged as a leading presence in that area in New England this spring,” Reiss writes.
Because most if not all special-teams coaches hate the new rule, they will all be tempted to prove to the NFL that this latest effort won’t reduce kickoff returns. That maybe they’ll ditch the new rule after only one year.
But the risk with rebelling against the change could be a decision to take the game away, for good. The league believes the kickoff return is the most dangerous play in the game. The league wants to make it safer. If the special-teams coaches really want to salvage the play, they should spend more time coming up with ways to make the play safer — instead of looking for ways to subvert the intentions of the powers-that-be to reduce concussions (and the unspoken risk of a catastrophic head or neck injury) by limiting the number of times that kick returns happen.
If the ongoing efforts to engineer fewer injuries through fewer kickoff returns continue to fail, the answer eventually and inevitably becomes having no kickoff returns at all.
Patriots kickers spent time on Friday working on squib kicks originally appeared on Pro Football Talk