The new kickoff alignment, introduced in 2024, features a strange glitch when it comes to penalties enforced on the kickoff. The NFL is now attempting to erase that glitch.
For 15-yard penalties that apply to the kickoff, the spot of the kickoff changes. Nothing else does. The landing zone and the restraining lines remain where they are if the kick happens at the kicking team’s 35.
On the surface, it makes the penalty relevant only to an onside kick. It became clear last year, with the touchback for a kick into or through the end zone, that the best strategy for a kickoff from the 50 is to kick the ball out of bounds deliberately. That gives the receiving team possession at its own 25.
The new batch of Competition Committee rules proposals includes one that, if adopted, replaces the deliberate out-of-bounds kick with something even better than the 25. A kickoff from the 50 that lands in the end zone (and isn’t returned) or goes out of the end zone results in the receiving team getting the ball on its own 20.
Why the 20 and not the 25? The league likely wanted to simplify the number of potential outcomes after a kickoff from the 50.
Already, the various possibilities (the 20 for a kick that lands in the landing zone, goes into the end zone and isn’t returned; the 35 for a kick into the end zone and isn’t returned or goes through the end zone; the 40 for a kickoff out of bounds or short of the landing zone) are a lot to remember. For a kickoff from the 50, the 25 no longer gets added to a menu that would have had four different potential outcomes.
So the menu of potential starting points for kicks that aren’t returned remains, if this rule is passed, the 20, the 35, and the 40. (And some would say that’s still too many.)
