Every NFL team’s ideal kick returner with new safer kickoff rules: Lamar Jackson, Saquon Barkley wild options

With the NFL debuting new rules governing kickoffs this upcoming season, there’s at least one coach out there (Mike McDaniel of the Dolphins) who thinks we are going to see No. 1 wideouts and running backs campaigning to get in on the return game. That may or may not actually come to fruition, but the team here at CBS Sports thinks it would be really freaking cool if it did. 

So, we got to imagining things and decided we needed to put together a list of the most fun possible return man for each. We’re going to do is walk through, division by division, each of the 32 teams in the NFL and see what we come up. The only caveat here is that they can’t currently be the team’s return man. We’re looking, essentially, for novelty acts — even if they’re the kind that would never happen, such as some of the quarterbacks listed below.

Without further ado …

NFC East

Lamb returned punts in college and his first couple NFL seasons, but he’s obviously been too important to the Cowboys’ offense to use him as a kick returner. But he’s electric with the ball in his hands and can make guys miss, so he’d be really fun to watch back there. Nabers has game-breaking speed, as we often saw at LSU, and Robinson (who has returned some punts but not kicks) is one of the shiftiest players in the NFL. Either one of them would give the Giants a really interesting look. We’re looking at tackle-breaking more than speed here, and AJB and Saquon are two of the best in the business in that arena. Plus, the power with which they run would be a new look for kickoffs. And then Daniels is just a preposterous athlete who could potentially break some wild plays if given the opportunity.

NFC North

Swift actually has a perfect skill set for this sort of role. All the things that have frustrated coaches about his running style could actually be played up in the new-look return game. Gibbs and Watson are pretty self-explanatory. Those…

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Author : Jared Dubin

Publish date : 2024-06-06 23:53:44

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