By Jason Alwang
Another NFL season is forthcoming, which brings new rules and changes for players, staff, and personnel. The NFL has already established some new rule changes for at least next season and potentially beyond. What will these changes be? How will they affect game flow? Will the NFL be more offensive-heavy than ever before?
The USFL and XFL merged to become the UFL, the United Football League. This merger typically wouldn’t mean anything, but the NFL is taking the kickoff rules of the UFL and implementing them for the upcoming NFL season. These new kickoff rules are said to help give offenses a better advantage in scoring and ramping up the scoring in the NFL. The league wants to make the beginning of the game mean something and make the kickoff more exciting after a team scores a touchdown. Many kickoffs often led to touchbacks, resulting in that play ending instantly. These rules will open the door for more returns. So, for starters, at kickoff, the team that is kicking and the kicker himself will kick from his own 35-yard line. From that kick, the other players on the kicking team will be lined up on the receiving team’s 40-yard line. As for the return team, there will be two of them in what is being called the landing zone. No one else except the two returners and the kicker is allowed to move from their position until one of those two receivers catches the ball. A touchback can only occur if the ball rolls into the endzone after touching the ground or hitting one of the two receivers. The idea is to test it out for next season and, if well received, return to this rule in 2025. Hopefully, this new rule will open up more early scores for the special teams.
The other rule change added to this season is the ban on the hip-drop tackle. The league floated the idea of banning this play shortly after the Super Bowl. Though not often used, the hip-drop tackle has led to significant injuries. The hip-drop tackle is usually deployed by a defender to take down a stronger offensive player, usually a running back about to break into the backfield. The new rules penalize any defender using the tackle with 15 yards, usually enough to give the offense a first down. Questions potentially arising from this are related to how those defensive players who sometimes would use the tackle to their advantage fare next season. The answer is more of a wait-until-seeing-it-on-the-field kind, but it will surely bring some more drama to the games.
With these two significant rule changes for next season, anything can happen. We will likely see more teams be able to score on kickoff returns to add more scoring to the games, as well as potentially fewer injuries on the field from the ban of the hip drop tackle. These and more are expected to make this upcoming NFL season very interesting.
