Kickoff rule not a big deal

Sometimes it feels like people act outraged just for the sake of being outraged.
A prime example is the reaction to the new kickoff rule in the NFL. For those of you who may not know, teams will now kickoff from the 35-yard line as opposed to the 30.
The rule change was suggested to help improve player safety — getting tackled by a 225-pound man running full speed for 40 yards is clearly not the safest activity — and the league’s owners voted 26-6 to approve it.
Not a big deal, right?
Apparently to some people it is.
Many national and regional radio hosts, television commentators and newspaper columnists have joined players and coaches in ranting and raving about the new rule. Most of their comments involve the theory that the new rule is destroying football as we know it and removing the kickoff return from the game entirely.
Such comments are ridiculous, and this “controversy” is overblown.
According to statistics from ESPN.com, through the first two weeks of preseason play this year 37 percent of kickoffs resulted in touchbacks. Therefore, nearly two-thirds of kickoffs were returned.
Yes, the touchback percentage is much higher than it was during the 2010 regular season (16 percent), but the change hardly takes the kickoff return completely out of the game.
And I know memories are short, but it is not as if the kickoff has always originated from the 30-yard line. The kickoff position was moved to the 30, from the 35, in 1994.
Rules change in football all the time. The goal posts once stood on the goal line. The helmets used to be made of leather. The forward pass was once illegal.
Things change, times change. Player safety has become a major issue in the light of recent studies regarding brain injury.
As much as we, as football fans, enjoy bone-jarring hits, none of us likes to see a player carted off the field. And there is no question that kickoff returns are among the most dangerous plays in the game.
Even so, the new rule does not come close to eliminating the kickoff return.
Teams that have great kickoff return specialists like Devin Hester of the Chicago Bears, Joshua Cribbs of the Cleveland Browns or Leon Washington of the Seattle Seahawks have a simple solution. If the kickoff goes into the end zone, tell those players to return it anyway.
Those who have worked themselves into a lather over the new kickoff rule need to relax. After a summer of lockouts and lawsuits, we should be happy to have any kickoffs at all.[[In-content Ad]]