NFL Considering No Kickoff
 

Due to high speed collisions that cause injury, the NFL is considering doing away with kickoffs in favor of something like a 4th & 10 or 15 for the scoring team at the 30 after a score.
This would be simlar to recovering an onside kick and having a chance to drive the ball if a 1st down can be made but yet would allow a punt instead of a kickoff (free kick) if the team would rather give the ball up.
I would not miss kickoffs at any level but I have seen many a bad punter from a live snap.

Should the NFL eliminate kickoffs in pursuit of a safer game? - ESPN

It has become completely clear that for as long as we have the current commissioner, the game will morph and twist until all action is gone and we're left with skill contests or two-hand touch. One tiny piece at a time in a relentless pursuit of the sterilization of the game. It will eventually occur to RG that the best way to prevent injuries is to stop playing the game entirely. This guy is the football anti-christ.

I just hope that on the day he is retired, the game is still recognizable.

Are plays from scrimmage kicks that much safer than from free ones?

If they really make it a play from scrimmage, that will deprive the receiving team of the right to a shot at the ball in an open field play. The team awarded it could run or pass, or kick directly out of bounds. Would the timing be the same as for, say, a scrimmage play following a touchback?

Think they'd abolish all free kicks, or only kickoffs?

After a field goal, how about giving the receiving team the right to scrimmage at the same place they could've if the attempt had missed?

Well, yes. But not to the point that they need to eliminate them.

Huh?

I think that after a FG, the scoring team should definitely be starting further back than after a TD, but I don't know how you'd work in K having a choice and R also having a choice.

I think football at all levels has realized that there are inherently dangerous parts of the game that provide little reward and a lot of risk. I would applaud the elimination of the kickoff -- besides being difficult to officiate, teams have to sacrifice players and/or roster spots for something that only happens a few times a game.

Well the NFLPA would never go for eliminating roster spots. That would be a big fight but you would have people on the roster that hardly play at all.

I just think they should go to the College Rule and bring the ball out to the 25 or 30 for a touchback.

Peace

They were thinking of doing that, but coaches said they'd just instruct their kickers to kick the ball short and really high so it'd land inside the 10 and there would be a return. And at the NFL level where kickers are miles ahead of college kickers, I think this strategy would really work.

This was predicted oh, almost 10 years ago now.

I never thought it would eliminate roster spots -- it would just mean that people wouldn't have to sacrifice themselves on speaical teams.

TV will never go for eliminating kickoffs, as that would remove too many "natural" commercial breaks. :D

War Story.......
 

When I was in the Military a few buds and I traveled to London to see the Minnesota Vikings and St. Louis Cardinals play the first American football game in London's Wembley Stadium in a preseason game on Aug 6, 1983.

We sat behind a bunch of local rugby players who had never seen an NFL game and agreed to keep us in beer if we talked them through the rules and what was happening. GREAT DEAL! :p

I will never forget after the opening kickoff, when all the players from the kickoff teams were leaving the field and the offenses/defenses were taking the field, one guy turns around and says, "Where are they going?"

I explained it to them.

As rugby players, they just didn't understand why this was needed.......

Kickoffs can provide some thrilling moments. They don't very often though. I don't think the kickoff is necessarily a fundamental part of football. There needs to be some way of giving the scoring team a chance of retaining possession but there are many ways of accomplishing that.

To modify the idea floated earlier, give the scoring team an option: the opponents get possession on their 20 or the scoring team retains possession (not sure from where) with 1 down and the line to gain set 15 yards down field.

I thought I was clear enough, but I guess not. The principle of the free kick is that the ball is always to be delivered in such a way as to allow the other team the possibility of gaining possession for an open field play (unless it is kicked far enough to go directly out of bounds beyond the goal line). The proposal would take that right away from the other team, by allowing the team awarded the play that substitutes for a free kick the possibility of either not kicking or kicking directly out of bounds.
I wasn't suggesting that as an also, but an alternative, as in Canadian football, where the team that scores a field goal does not kick off unless the team scored against makes them do so. Only after a touchdown or safety touch is there necessarily a kick. But if you wanted to combine it with the current proposal, then I suppose if the team scored against via FG declines to scrimmage, you'd follow by the procedure proposed above.

This has been discussed on here in reference to NCAA and/or Fed rules for at least 2 years. I don't recall any moderation on those posts by Roger Godell, nor do I recall him starting the posts.

I'm not sure what one thing has to do with another.

I disagree -- if you add up all the TDs or even 70+ yard runbacks on KOs and compare them to scrimmage plays starting inside the 10 (usual fielding of KOs), I think you'd find a substantially higher percentage of long runs/returns on KOs.

Even in the subvarsity games I've done, we have a decent percentage of long KO runbacks -- something like 10-15 percent, at least. I haven't really thought about it until your comment here, but it does happen quite a bit!