During the 2023 NFL offseason a rule change was made that redefined how kickoffs worked. This new version was branded the “Dynamic Kickoff” and is in many ways a dramatic departure from the past. Per NFL commissioner Roger Goodell the motivation was twofold. First: the number of injuries that occurred during kickoffs was significantly higher than what was observed on other play types. Second: teams were overwhelmingly opting to kick the ball out of the endzone and take a touchback rather than incur the risk of a big return from the receiving team. As publicly available NFL injury data is for the most part not sufficiently granular to provide play level insights my focus in this post will be the second consideration. With the conclusion of the 2024 season we now have a full season of data to evaluate and we can look at what was changed, how teams behaved, and whether the stated goals were achieved or not.

What Changed?

The NFL rulebook is a very legalistic and verbose document and posting the old vs. new verbiage would likely confuse more than inform so I am boiling it down to the key bullet points:

• Before: The kicker kicked from the 35-yard line with the coverage team able to run downfield immediately
• After: The kicker still kicks from the 35-yard line, but the coverage team must line up at the receiving team’s 40-yard line and remain stationary
• Before: The return team could position blockers anywhere with immediate movement allowed
• After: The return team must place blockers at their own 35-yard line and remain stationary
• Before: Both teams could move as soon as the ball was kicked
• After: Neither team can move until either the returner touches the ball or the ball hits the ground in the “landing zone” (between the goal line and 20-yard line)
• Before: No designated landing zone. Kicks that reached the end zone could be returned or result in a touchback
• After: Designated “landing zone” between the goal line and 20-yard line where the ball must land or be fielded for a return. Kicks that fly into or through the end zone result in an automatic touchback at the 30-yard line (instead of the previous 25-yard line)

For those of you who are more visual learners here is a video explainer of what the new kickoff is going to look like with more details about the rules:

The spring football aficionados should find that this look pretty familiar as this is materially the same as the XFL 2.0 kickoff that was originally developed by Sam Schwartzstein of Amazon Prime Vision fame. The primary change is that some of the yardages have been tweaked (spoiler alert: these are important for incentives!).

What Was The Impact?

Now that we have a full season of the new kickoff regime to analyze we can compare and contrast to see if the stated goal was achieved. The following analysis was enabled by data from the nflverse¹ and compares kickoffs from 2023 vs. 2024. The total number of kickoffs in this time range was 5,787.

Did the number of touchbacks go down?

In 2023 the touchback rate was 73.2% while in 2024 it was 63.8%. The new rule did move the needle but I would imagine this is not as large of a shift as the NFL hoped for. A 9.4% decrease is certainly not nothing but it’s fair to say the stated goal of getting a bunch more exciting returns was not achieved.

What does starting yardage look like now as compared to the prior rules?

Given the previously mentioned touchback rates one would expect starting yard lines for the receiving team to mostly be a function of where touchbacks are spotted. Looking at the shape of the data that does indeed appear to be the case. The 5 yard difference in the two distributions is explained by the yard line touchbacks are spotted on moving from the 25 to the 30.

What about kickoffs where we do have returns?

If we filter out touchbacks do we see any changes that might be due to the changes in formation and alignment rules? Does the “landing zone” cause changes in behavior?

While it’s difficult to tease apart the causality of which components of the rule changes are responsible there does appear to be some difference in outcomes in the old vs. new regime.

The top line here is that the mean field position after a return in 2023 was the 25.5 yard line. Given the rather large fraction of the distribution that results in an outcome worse than a touchback (in this case 52.4%) it is understandable that coaches on the receiving team would largely decline the 0.5 yards of expected value when they are able in order to reduce variance. An interesting corollary to this is that if you are kicking off and your team is losing there is some level of incentive to try to induce the receiving team to attempt a return in order to increase variance. In a neutral or better game state it is understandable that kicking teams would generally opt to boot the ball out of the back of the endzone rather than open the door to the possibility of a big return. No special teams coordinator in the league is going to reject the “cost” of 0.5 yards to take away the possibility of a Devin Hester-esque highlight play.

How did this change in 2024? The mean field position after a return for the 2024 season was the 31.1 yard line. Some combination of the constraints introduced by the “landing zone” and the new alignment rules is yielding the receiving teams an extra 5.6 yards per attempted return. In a vacuum this should make return attempts more attractive for the receiving team but the movement of the yard line for spotting touchbacks up to the 30 counteracts this somewhat. With a mean field position after a return at the 31.1 yard line you are only gaining an expected 1.1 yards over taking the touchback. While 1.1 yards is better than the 0.5 yards you would expect from the old rules you also are slightly more likely to have a return worse than a touchback. In 2024 the rate of return attempts that did not get to the 30 yard line was 54.1% whereas the 2023 rate for attempts failing to get to the 25 was 52.5%. From the perspective of the kicking team it does make sense given the disparity in “failed” returns that don’t get back to the yard line of the touchback spot to be a little more willing to let opponents have a chance to return. The problem for the NFL is that from the perspective of variance reduction the cost of a touchback is still fairly cheap. The fact that the incentive disparity between touchbacks and expected return field positions remains de minimus most of the time means that we are not going to see the large shift in behaviors that the NFL was hoping for.

What can we conclude?

I think the big takeaways here boil down to the following:

• The effect of the NFL’s attempt to incentivize more returns on team behaviors was noticeable but probably smaller than hoped for.
• Returns under the new rules will get further downfield on average than they did under the old ones.
• The movement of the starting field position after touchbacks from the 25 to the 30 shifts the balance of incentives for the receiving team such that the benefits of bigger returns is largely neutralized.
• Rational decision making about whether to attempt returns or take touchbacks is largely going to be a function of game state and whether receiving teams want to increase or reduce variance.