How NFL ruined kickoffs. And how to fix them

The NFL says its primary concern in the whole wide world - ahead of making lots and lots of money, ahead of getting boffo TV ratings, even ahead of winning another mirror ball trophy on "Dancing With The Stars" - is the safety of its players.

That's the league's story and it's sticking to it.

Ignore the nearly 3,000 former players who have filed suit against the league for not telling them the truth about the long-term dangers of concussions. They are misguided souls who have been hoodwinked by a bunch of blood-sucking lawyers.

Ignore all of those vicious, teeth-rattling hits down through the years that the league used to glorify. Ignore that popular old "Monday Night Football" opening that showed two helmets colliding and being blown to smithereens. That was before, uh, before the league realized somebody actually could get hurt playing this game.

Now, it says it's trying to make the game as safe as possible, or at least safe enough to help convince potential jurors it would never, ever do anything to endanger the welfare of its players.

Which brings us to the league's decision last year to mess with one of its most exciting plays - the kickoff return.

Concerned about what it thought was an inordinate amount of concussions that were occurring on kickoffs, the league took the bold step of moving kickoffs up from the 30- to the 35-yard line.

What's so bold about that, you ask? Well, those extra 5 yards dramatically increased the number of touchbacks - and dramatically decreased the number of kickoff returns last season.

In 2010, before the moveup, only 17 percent of the kickoffs in the league resulted in touchbacks. Last year, that number skyrocketed to 45.1 percent.

The number of touchbacks jumped from 416 in 2010 to 1,120 last year. The percent of kickoffs into the end zone or beyond increased from 39.2 to a whopping 81.8.

The league's competition committee, which recommended the rule change to the owners, wasn't surprised at all by the dramatic increase in touchbacks. Going into last season, Atlanta Falcons president Rich McKay, the longtime co-chairman of the competition committee, said he expected it to be somewhere between 40 and 50 percent.

But he insisted the change was necessary.

"The play is such and the injury data is such that it needs revision," he said after the owners approved the moveup by a 26-6 vote in March 2011. "This is a change that we think needs to happen.

"When it comes to players' safety, we are always going to have players' safety trump the competitive aspects of the game. Period."

From the standpoint of increasing player safety, mission accomplished. To no one's surprise, fewer kickoff returns translated into fewer concussions on kickoff returns. Of course, eliminating tackling and playing two-hand touch also would dramatically reduce concussions. But it also would ruin the game.

According to injury data provided by a consulting firm to the NFL Players Association earlier this month, the total number of concussions in the league last year dropped minimally - from 270 to 266. But the number of concussions on kickoff returns decreased 43 percent - from 35 in 2010 to 20 last season.

"It accomplished what it was intended to accomplish, which is fewer returns," said Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh, who was the Eagles' special-teams coach from 1998 through 2006.

"To me, though, it takes a lot of the excitement out of the game. Kickoffs and kickoff returns are a huge part of football. They're very exciting. Just taking it out of the game doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

"And I don't think they've really addressed the specific issue of how the concussions were happening."

Most concussions on kickoffs occur as the result of two players running toward each other at full speed and colliding. "Like two rams butting heads," Harbaugh said. "That's how most of them happen. And you can get those out with certain types of rule changes. You didn't have to try and get rid of the kickoff return."

An obvious solution, and one that has been suggested by a number of coaches, including Harbaugh and the Eagles' Andy Reid, would be to make it mandatory for the return team to put a minimum number of players within a certain distance of the kickoff line, which would decrease the number of ram-like collisions.

"You could put more guys on the line of scrimmage, so you'd have fewer guys on the back end," Harbaugh said. "Say you have to put eight up on the line. That leaves two plus the returner to cover the field on the squibs [short kicks]. Or maybe six have to be within 10 yards [of the kickoff line] and two more have to be at a certain depth.

"Then you wouldn't have the big wedge guys, because they couldn't run far enough to set up a wedge. You'd have to have smaller guys out there as the back-end guys, because it would be harder to put big guys back there, because they've got to cover ground and catch balls.

"So those long wedge blocks [would be eliminated]. You'd still have trap blocks. But I don't think trap blocks were causing that many concussions. That's one way to do it. Take the big guys out of the play as much as you can."

There were 1,363 kickoff returns last season, which was 662 fewer than the year before. That's an average of almost 21 fewer per team. The Eagles had only 39 returns. The last time they had fewer than that was 1953 (37 in a 12-game season).

"I know why they did it and I guess it got the results they wanted," Eagles special-teams coordinator Bobby April said. "But I don't like the rule. The play's exciting. I can't imagine any football fan who liked [the rule change]. I can't imagine anybody said, 'Boy, I can't wait to see this touchback.'

"Players are paid to compete every play. And it's become a throwaway play half the time now."

The increase in touchbacks moved the average drive start following kickoffs back almost 5 yards last season, from the 26.8-yard line in 2010 to the 22.1.

With nearly 82 percent of kickoffs reaching the end zone last season, teams have become more willing to let their returners gamble and bring balls out of the end zone, no matter how deep.

The Jets and the Bears, the only two teams in the league with touchback percents under 30 percent last year, gave their returners free rein to bring out anything they could get their hands on. The strategy worked pretty well. The Jets finished first in the league in average drive start (26.1). The Bears were fifth (23.6).

Others, though, took a little more conservative approach. April said his rule of thumb with his returners is 5 yards. Anything deeper than that, take a knee. That doesn't mean they always listen, though.

In the Eagles' first preseason game against the Steelers, rookie Brandon Boykin, who will be the team's primary kickoff returner this season, brought out a kickoff from 8 yards deep in the end zone. The gamble paid off. He returned it 46 yards to the 38-yard line. But April had a little chat with him afterward and let him know he shouldn't make a habit of doing that.

"That was my first one, and I just kind of had that excitement inside of me to get that return out," Boykin said. "Fortunately, it turned out good."

Boykin, who was one of the nation's top college kickoff returners last year at the University of Georgia, detests the NFL's new kickoff line and said he likely will push that 5-yard end zone limit to the max.

"[Returning kickoffs] is a strong part of my game, and to have that kind of cut in half like that takes away from what I like to do and what I can do," he said. "So, whenever I do get a chance, if it's not too deep, I want to make the most of it."

The league average for kickoff returns actually climbed last season, from 22.3 in 2010 to 23.8. But that mostly had to do with the fact that returners were bringing more kickoffs out of the end zone, which helped pad their return average. Twelve returners averaged 25.0 yards per attempt or higher last season, which was just one fewer than the previous season before the rule change.

"Because there's so much more chance of a touchback, you're more willing to bring it out," said the Ravens' Harbaugh. "When you bring it out, for whatever reason, you can get it past the 15 pretty good. Nobody's getting hit at the 10 for some reason anymore.

"The willingness of guys to bring kicks out [of the end zone] has created a little more spacing. Plus, the people on kickoff coverage aren't as good at covering kicks, because they don't cover as many of them. So there's a little more big-play potential. I think percentagewise, you saw more touchdowns per return than in the past."

Actually, that wasn't the case. The percent of kickoff returns returned for touchdowns shrunk from 0.7 percent in 2010 to 0.3 percent last season.

"It felt like there were more big returns last year," Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff said. "Maybe not as many touchdowns [only six, down from 20 the year before], but you turn on the tape and every week, we were watching a guy get a well-over-50-yard return. So, while the league was trying to minimize [kickoff returns], they almost created a more exciting play. Because now, while it may not happen as often, when it does, it can be really big."

Perhaps no one in the league has been more affected by the rule change than Cundiff. Two years ago, before they moved the kickoffs up to the 35, he led the league with 40 touchbacks. The next closest was Sebastian Janikowski, of the Raiders, with 29.

Cundiff and Janikowski were the only two kickers in the league with 25 or more touchbacks in 2010. Last year, that number swelled to 23.

Cundiff said if not for returners being more willing to bring the ball out of the end zone, the touchback percent in the league would have been even higher than it was last year.

"I looked at our game against Atlanta in 2010," Cundiff said. "I kicked the ball off 3, 4, 3 and 5 yards deep [into the end zone]. And they sat on it [took a touchback] every time. Now, you kick the ball 3 yards deep in the end zone and it's coming out. Every time."

While the league obviously is very pleased with the impact moving kickoffs up 5 yards has had in reducing concussions, Harbaugh thinks they will eventually repeal the rule once coaches can convince the owners and the competition committee that there are other ways to reduce concussions on kickoff returns without ruining one of the most exciting plays in the game.

"I think they're still considering moving it back and taking out the specific type of collisions that happen that cause most of the concussions, which definitely could be done with a couple of other rule changes," the Ravens coach said.

For at least one more season, though, enjoy all of those touchbacks.

Contact Paul Domowitch at pdomo@aol.com. Follow him on Twitter @Pdomo. For more Eagles coverage and opinion, read the Daily News' blog at eagletarian.com.