NFL adjusts fair-catch rule for kickoffs and safeties in 2023: What’s next for kickoffs?

NFL owners approved a rule change Tuesday involving fair catches for the upcoming season. Here’s what you need to know:

The ball will be put in play at the receiving team’s 25-yard line if there is a fair catch on a free kick (kickoff or safety kick) behind the receiving team’s 25-yard line.
This is currently only set for the 2023 season.
The Competition Committee submitted this rule with the goal of improving player safety.

What’s next for this rule?

The NFL is certainly trending toward eliminating kickoffs all together, even though that’s not how the league wanted to frame it publicly. The league knew there would be heavy opposition from this, but it’s happening anyway. The premise is healthy and safety, and I get that. It also takes away the potential for momentum-changing plays, even with touchdowns involved.

I’m more curious to see how this would affect roster construction if this becomes permanent starting in 2024. This would decrease the value for players involved in kickoff coverage on both sides of the ball, whether it’s blockers, tacklers or returners. Yes, the elements of punt coverage would remain, unless the NFL decides to alter that at some point. But would teams place less emphasis in some phases of special teams as a reason to keep or cut players?

There’s also precedent that a one-year rule change actually only sticks around for one year. This goes back to the “NOLA No Call” during the 2018 NFC Championship Game between the Saints and Rams involving the infamous pass-interference penalty that wasn’t called. The NFL made pass interference a reviewable call the next season. But few PI penalties were ever reversed and the league ditched the rule leading into the 2020 season.

Still, you’d think there’s a good possibility that the new kickoff rule will remain in the league after the 2023 season. — Holder

What they’re saying

Rich McKay, who heads the league’s competition committee, was asked Tuesday during a news conference about the possibility of squib kicks forcing a kick return. McKay refuted that notion.

“It doesn’t mean they (kickers) won’t do it, but we went back and looked at college and what the reaction was in college when they made this change and actually the number of squib kicks went down. … So we’ve looked at all that data. Could they do it? They could, but then they run the risk that if someone at the 20 (yard line) catches a squib and begins to run, they’re automatically at the 30-, 35-yard line. So it does affect field position.

“The only thing I would say, too, to special teams coaches is in the kicks that they were hanging to the 5-yard line or inside and getting this advantage, the average start line for those kicks being returned was the 24.3. …

“We did this rule for one year only because we really do want to get more to a long-term solution, and maybe the long-term solution includes having more returns in the game and just trying to make the play safer. … Special teams is a critically critical part of our game. And yet because of health and safety, we had to modify many times over the years. We now need to find a way to try to revolutionize the rule, if we can, in a way to get the kick return back in the game.”

Backstory

The adjustment to the fair catch rule is the second game-day change to be approved at the Spring League Meeting in Minnesota and means that the NFL will have the same kickoff rule as college football.

On Monday, owners approved a modification to game-day active rosters that will allow teams to dress a third QB on game days without using an active roster spot this season.

The new bylaw allows a team to activate a third QB “during the game, if the club’s first two quarterbacks on its game day Active List are not able to participate in the game due to injury or disqualification.”

Its approval follows the 2022 NFC Championship Game that saw the 49ers have to re-insert an injured Brock Purdy into the game after backup Josh Johnson entered concussion protocol.

Required reading

(Photo: Matt Kartozian / USA Today)