The past decade has seen the NFL marred by increased concerns over player safety, and justifiably so. As a result football's "most dangerous play" has undergone a few facelifts, with kickoff rule changes in 2011, 2016, and 2018.
Oh I Didn't Know We Were Asking Trick Questions
What's the safest way to return a kickoff? Don't. Look at changes in the percent of kick returns that were touchbacks over the past 15 seasons.
Touchbacks have been on the rise, with the most marked increase occuring with the 2011 rule change, a 175% increase in touchback percentage compared to the prior season.
Why Such a Large Change?
But why did this alteration lead to such an increase? Well, more kicks were actually making it to the endzone, meaning more touchbacks were possible. Check out the changes in the percent of kicks that made it into the endzone over the same timeframe.
Moving the kicking team up five yards caused a doubling in the percentage of kicks that made it into the endzone resulting in a dramatic rise in touchback percentage. Touchbacks are guaranteed yardage, and, while not contact free, they do have fewer high impact collisions than a full blown return. A safer guaranteed twenty yard return becomes even more appealing, when you consider that a five yard move up also puts the kicking team five yards closer to the return man.
So Why Weren't There More?
If there were so many touchbackable kicks, why wasn't the touchback percentage even higher?
While there are obvious football reasons to return a kick, like being the last play of the game, these events are pretty rare and shouldn't significantly impact the decision to take a touchback. Looking at the data, there seems to be two reasons dilineated by the 2016 change.
Pre-2016
The return team drove the pre-2016 lack of touchbacks. For example, even though 80% of all kicks were elligible for a touchback only 40% actually were a touchback in 2011. This pattern continued from 2011 to 2015, where the return team took at most 68% of available touchback opportunities.
To help explain this let's look at kicks where the return team had a choice between taking a touchback and staging a return. We'll plot the mean and median return position on touchbackable kicks that didn't result in a touchback from 2011-2019.
Before 2016 a touchback moved the ball to the 20, and we can see that when the return team decided to return a touchbackable kick they averaged a position beyond the 20. The median, while smaller than the mean, was also beyond the 20 from 2011 to 2013. Being able to average a return beyond the set touchback yardage encourages teams to take the ball out. Football is a game of inches, according to Coach D'Amato, and as we'll soon see actual NFL coaches aren't much different.
2016 and Beyond
In 2016 the NFL moved the touchback return position up five yards from the 20 to the 25. That should have led to an immediate increase in touchbacks, but look at the touchback percentage plot, 2016 touchbacks stayed at the 2015 rate and fell below that in 2017.
"People don't necessarily want to give up five yards. We, on special teams, fight for every inch. If you're saying, 'We're going to take five yards from you,' we're going to fight for every inch, not just five yards." That wasn't Al Pacino, but 2016 Ravens special teams coordinator. This reasoning was shared by many coaches around the league.
Data from the 2016-2019 seasons shows this mentality was more than just PR. Re-examining the touchbackable kick percentage, the 2016 rule change was followed by a decrease in the percentage of touchbackable kicks. That change was not an anomaly, the percentage of kicks eligible for a touchback has remained at that 2016 level.
A Game of Inches
Okay let's buy what these coaches are selling, football is a game of inches, and if you can find a slight edge on kickoff you should take it. But is there an edge?
As of 2016 the answer is no for taking the ball out of the endzone. Once the guaranteed yardage was moved up 5 yards both the mean and median return position was short of the 25. So unless a kickoff return is the absolutely last chance to score, the average NFL return man should never take the ball out of the endzone. The touchback and touchbackable percentage graphs suggest that teams are learning this lesson, as the touchback percentage approaches the touchbackable percentage.
What about for the kicking team? Well let's examine the situation special teams coaches were so eager to exploit, kicks short of the endzone. Below are the mean and median return position for kicks that could not have been a touchback.
The return team barely inched out the kicking team on average, with the mean position being beyond the 25 in every season since 2011. The kicking team does perform better when measuring by the median, but since the 2018 rule change they've only broken even. Even if you remove kickoffs that go shorter than 40 yards (squibs and onsides) this plot doesn't change.
Stop Stop They're Already Dead
Kickoffs were pronounced dead in 2011, 2013, 2018, and probably every other year in the 2010s. Yet for some reason the NFL won't let them die. There are some cosmetic reasons for this. Kickoff is literally the way we think about a game's start time, 'Tune in for the 8PM kickoff on NBC'. But these aren't compelling reasons to keep the play around. There is a lot of potential for exciting alternatives to the kickoff, and the NFL has experimented with them just this past season.
It's time to make this stop. If the NFL Competition Committee won't do it, the coaching staffs should. Neither the kicking team nor the return team has much to gain from not taking the touchback when they can. Just kick the ball to the endzone and, unless your team features a return savant *ahem Cordarrelle Patterson *ahem, keep it there.