The NFL’s annual meetings will take place next week in Orlando, Florida. After years of some level of drama around the meetings — hello, Daniel Snyder — this year’s meetings plan to be so ho-hum that the league pushed up the end date from Wednesday to Tuesday.
The biggest ticket item for these meetings will be the proposed change to the kickoff. The league saw its lowest kickoff return rate (22%) in the modern era and it was charged with figuring out an alternative. They hope they’ve done just that.
Sources tell me the low return rate coupled with all 13 kickoffs going for touchbacks in the Super Bowl made it imperative to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to find a solution. The league, in consultation with the competition committee and special teams coaches around the league, have devised a plan they hope three-quarters of NFL team owners will approve in the coming days.
The kickoff will resemble the XFL kickoff in most meaningful ways with some slight departures. The hope is to increase returns and reinject excitement into a play that has lost purpose.
But will NFL team owners go for it? Is it too quirky or gimmicky? That’s a fear within the league. Rarely does such a radical change take place within the National Football League. But this proposal has the support of Goodell.
The league has also left itself an out, allowing for it to continue tweaking the exact language of the kickoff rule that can be voted upon at the May league meetings. Perhaps there’s conversation in Orlando that forces some adjustments to the new proposal, and the NFL wants to account for that.
One smart thing most around the league have done is to stop calling it the “XFL kickoff.” One of quickest ways to not get something accomplished among NFL team owners is to compare the NFL to other leagues or, worse, take ideas from a lesser professional football league. Anyone wanting this proposal to pass should…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/2024-nfl-annual-meetings-owners-to-decide-whether-revamped-kickoff-lives-or-gets-the-boot/
Author : Jonathan Jones
Publish date : 2024-03-21 21:08:29
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