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The Data Is In: The NFL Kickoff Continues It's Path To Becoming A Meaningless Formality

Just look at this death march of the NFL kickoff. After this season's implementation of the fair catch rule kickoff returns are down over 40 percent from last year which is by far the biggest year-over-year decline in terms of percentages in recent history if not ever. 

I'm not exactly sure what the plan is here but it's pretty obvious the NFL wants the kickoff dead. If that's the case, why not just do it already? As much as I appreciate the new rule giving us a confused Gunner Olszewski making quite undebatably to dumbest play in the history of football by fair catching a kickoff that would have gone out of bounds I think I speak for everyone is saying kickoffs suck now. Which was probably the NFL's goal all along so they can be the good guy and take it away like they weren't the ones who ruined it in the first place. 

Long are the days of watching Devin Hester take one all the way to open up the Super Bowl vs the Peyton Manning Colts giving me false drunk hope the Bears might win. I'll never forget high fiving all my buddies as every house on Adams street at Western Illinois University went absolutely bananas. 

There used to be a true rush of adrenaline on an opening NFL kickoff. Not only because it meant football was starting, but because we knew a sick return might be seconds away. Now it's basically ten seconds of dudes dogmatically going through the motions like Communion or a wedding rehearsal. Everyone's just going along with the motions waiting for it to be over. 

Here's a stat. Wanna know how much time we wasted watching kickoffs this season? Let's take the inverse of the graph I made above to show number of touchbacks across time. 

The total number of touchbacks for 2023 is 1,970.  If we assume kickoffs are ten seconds on average that's five and half hours of watching football Communion. Holy boring. 

There have been a grand total of four kickoff returns for touchdowns in 2023. There were six last year and nine the year before. Is five and a half hours of Communion worth four touchdown returns? And there were merely ten returns over 50 yards compared to 29 in 2022. There were 69 such returns back in 2008 which I think we can all agree is "nice". 

So just go ahead with it already, Goodell. Kill the kickoff altogether. You've left it for dead as it is already. And we all get it as to why. Two armies sprinting towards each other Brave Heart style probably isn't a recipe for safety. But quit with the half measures then. Ball on the 25 after a team scores. Just get on with it because it's going to go away altogether eventually anyway.

- @Stathole