Several years ago, the NFL publicly labeled the kickoff as the most dangerous play in the game. The league then embarked on an effort not to make the play safer, but to make it happen less frequently.
It worked. Too well.
As explained by Competition Committee chairman Rich McKay in a Thursday conference call regarding this year’s proposed rule changes, the 2010 season had 416 touchbacks on kickoffs, and 45,000 kick-return yards. In 2023, there were 1,970 touchbacks and only 13,000 kickoff-return yards.
In Super Bowl LVIII, all 13 kickoffs resulted in touchbacks. As McKay pointed out, 12 of them landed beyond the end zone.
“We’ve taken too much out of the game,” McKay said. “It’s too exciting of a play.”
Now, the league is contemplating a dramatic about-face, with the kickoff going from being a meaningless play to the kickoff leading to a return almost every single time it happens. If the changes to the kickoff were fueled by an uptick in concussions, pumping hundreds of more live plays into the game over the course of a season will definitely result in more concussions.
That might seem confusing. The reality, however, is that it’s not about concussions. It’s about catastrophic injuries, like the one suffered in 2007 by former Bills tight end Kevin Everett and the one suffered in 2010 by former Rutgers defensive lineman Eric LeGrand.
The issue isn’t contact. It’s high-speed collisions. Two players run at each other. They reach maximum velocity. They instinctively dip their helmets just before impact. The forces congregate, potentially, in a player’s cervical spine. A bone possibly breaks, it possibly damages the spinal cord, and it possibly results in a serious injury, or worse.
That’s what the league is trying to avoid, more than anything else. Concussions are going to happen in football. Serious neck injuries are more likely to happen when two players are running toward each other at their top-end speeds and colliding while going in opposite directions. The physics of…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/kickoff-change-more-avoiding-catastrophic-143035846.html
Author : ProFootball Talk on NBC Sports
Publish date : 2024-03-24 14:30:35
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