How NFL Teams Can Benefit From The New Rule Changes

Doing the "correct" thing on kickoffs can create edges in how teams practice and the number of QBs they can comfortably roster.

This year’s rule changes are important, but perhaps not for the obvious reasons.

Previously I wrote that XFL data suggests that the optimal way to approach kickoffs this season is to just kick a touch-back. The tl;dr is that under conditions that best approximate the new NFL rules, the average kickoff —including penalties — should be expected to be returned to the 30 yard line. Since kicking the ball through the end zone spots the ball at the 30 yard line with zero risk of a long return, it makes good sense to just boot it out the back of the goal.¹

This is particularly appealing for the risk-averse among the NFL coaching fraternity…which is like all of them. But there are also important second-order benefits to this strategy.

More practice time for other things

One perk is that you no longer have to practice kickoffs.² Yes, it’s true there may be times where it makes sense to try and pin a team back or to try and use a kickoff return to run out the clock (maybe — I think you’d want at least a two score lead, if not more), but teams could potentially just do a preseason install to cover it. This can free up coaching and player time to focus on game-plan items that have a higher likelihood of impacting the outcome of the game.

Evidence for extra practice time being impactful can be found in a recent paper by Mike Lopez and Tom Bliss. In Bye-Bye, Bye Advantage: Estimating the competitive impact of rest differential in the National Football League, Lopez and Bliss find evidence that it probably isn’t extra rest that conferred an advantage to teams coming off a bye. Instead it was more likely that it was the extra planning and the extra time to install that gameplan that gave teams an edge coming off a bye week.

If Lopez and Bliss are correct, freeing up scarce practice time by eliminating kickoff related drills and preparation could confer a similar type of advantage. It could even be an advantage that compounds itself as the season wears on and the hours applied to anything other than kickoffs add up.

Rostering a third QB on the 53

The other edge teams can earn themselves by kicking touchbacks is that they can more easily keep a third QB on the 53-man roster.

Currently many teams are loathe to give up a spot on the coveted 53 to a player who is highly unlikely to see the field. But the payoff for making this investment can be massive, and if you aren’t defending kick returns on a regular basis, the last spots on the roster become far more fungible.

The canonical example of the potental value of a third QB is the San Francisco 49ers NFC Championship playoff loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in 2022. In that game Brock Purdy tore his UCL on the game’s opening possession, giving way to backup Josh Johnson. But Purdy had to re-enter the game when Johnson — the only other QB on the 49ers active roster — suffered a concussion.

Purdy was understandably unable to throw the ball — his elbow exploded, after all — and had to hand-off almost exclusively for the remainder of the game. He finished with 23 yards passing and the Niners lost 31-7.

San Francisco’s running attack was good that year (this was the year they traded for Christian McCaffrey) and it probably could’ve sustained them if they could’ve mustered even a small passing threat behind center. In other words, a third QB.

Finding room for a third QB is particularly important at this moment given the recent news that teams are now unable to stash an emergency QB on their practice squad due to a veto of the new rule by the NFLPA. The third QB is now no longer “free.”³ But by taking advantage of the kickoff rule and fully embracing the implications of that strategy, teams can still build a robust roster without sacrificing depth in any crucial areas.⁴

* NFC, not AFC Championship.

1. Situational football caveats apply.

2. To be clear, this is not my idea. Many have advanced it across the league, some publicly.

3. It is the case however that the emergency QB, so long as he’s on the 53, does not count toward a team’s 48 active on gameday. So he is still free in that sense.

4. This is a common pattern in football. Doing the optimal thing often has knock-on effects that make the optimal approach even more valuable. Teams that plan on going for it on 4th down can reap benefits not just on fourth down play calls but on third down as well. Often called “2 to get it,” knowing ahead of time that you are going to call a 4th down play allows you to call a play on third down that doesn’t have to get you all the yards needed for a first down. Or it allows you to take a shot down field to try and catch the defense cheating the run or a short pass. Committing to a strategy allows for more creative tactical decision-making.