Happy Returns: NFL’s New Dynamic Kickoff ‘Will Look Weird’

The inventor never imagined the league would adopt one of his unique plays when he gathered the brightest minds in football six years ago to provide the best set of rules for the XFL.

The NFL recently adopted the XFL’s version of the kickoff, but made several tweaks in an attempt to revive the classic play. / Stephen Maturen/Getty Images

Reminding others of being a Stanford alumnus might come off as pompous. But Sam Schwartzstein had a valid excuse for sharing his credentials from the elite private school in Palo Alto, Calif.

His football knowledge was often questioned as the inventor of the NFL’s new kickoff rules. He got the credit for the new play that the XFL unveiled in 2020 during its second attempt to become a successful professional football league, but that only made it easy to point the blame at Schwartzstein as the guy trying to change America’s favorite sport.

“I had coaches telling me I was ruining football when I created this in the XFL,” Schwartzstein told Sports Illustrated in June. “‘You don’t know football.’ I played at a pretty high level. I know football.”

Schwartzstein went undrafted during the 2013 NFL draft, but as a center protecting Andrew Luck and playing for Jim Harbaugh as a team captain at Stanford certainly qualifies as knowing football. He also knows enough football as the current analytics expert for Amazon Prime Video and Thursday Night Football. And, obviously, the XFL trusted his knowledge enough to make him the director of operations when the league returned a half decade ago.

These days Schwartzstein is getting thank yous for changing football and it’s not because his qualifications have grown. The NFL recently adopted the XFL’s version of the kickoff, but made several tweaks in an attempt to revive the classic play and lower the injury rate on the high collisions that often occurred with the old rules.

“Right now, they’re all saying, ‘Great job, thank you. It will look weird to a lot of football fans the first time they see it. … But I can totally see why people will be turned off by it the first time they see it.”

- Sam Schwartzstein

Four years after the XFL received mixed reviews for its unique kickoff rules, the NFL has had a hard time finding criticism for its version of the play, with several league executives, coaches, scouts and players embracing the biggest change the game has seen in years.

“Right now, they’re all saying, ‘Great job, thank you,’” Schwartzstein says. “It will look weird to a lot of football fans the first time they see it. … But I can totally see why people will be turned off by it the first time they see it. But the more you see it, the more you kind of know [the rules], all those guys who are down there not moving, but the ball is moving, the more you see it, the better it will feel and then you’ll get to see the big returns that you’ll want to see.”

Before the league gets feedback about how the new play actually looks on the field this season, NFL teams have been scrambling to make sure everyone knows the rules, how to properly execute it and when to unleash creativity for the many explosive plays that everyone is counting on.

Some teams might be spending extra time working on the possibility of not using a kicker during kickoffs because the new rules might require the kicker to be more involved with tackling. Kansas City Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub hinted at this in the offseason when he revealed the possibility of using safety Justin Reid instead of kicker Harrison Butker for kickoffs.

Other teams might be contemplating whether to use their important skill players on special teams as returners because one missed tackle could be all that’s needed for turning a short return into a 100-yard touchdown. If the Miami Dolphins decide to use speedy wide receivers Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle as their two kickoff returners—two are required in the landing zone between the goal line and 20-yard line—that might eliminate the possibility of not using a kicker because a strong kick into the back of the end zone for a possession to start at the 30-yard line might be better than giving two of the fastest players in the NFL a chance for an explosive return.

Ficken on the NFL's dynamic kickoff: "It’s exciting right now in terms of how we’re trying to come up with things and be creative." / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

“It’s a good thing we don’t play Miami,” Los Angeles Chargers special teams coordinator Ryan Ficken jokingly says about the potential scenario this season. “To answer your question, it’s going to depend on the returners, how to adjust, how the formation is, how we feel what’s the best way to attack it and give us the edge. That’s going to be a game plan, a specific type of plan. … All that is still up in the air.”

For Los Angeles Rams running back Kyren Williams, he’s looking forward to the possibility of offensive linemen being used as blockers on kickoff returns.

“You don’t really see that,” Williams says. “As a running back, I can see the similarities to the kickoff and a running play, with setting up your blocks and running off your blocks.”

No one truly knows how this play will look throughout the 2024 regular season, but perhaps the focus shouldn’t be on the short term. Ironically, the NFL looking to revitalize an outdated play that has been around for more than a century could be the start of the league preserving its popularity for the next 100 years.

Sports leagues that don’t look ahead while on top often begin to lose their appeal over time. It happened to Major League Baseball, which continues to find ways to attract a younger audience. The same occurred with boxing, with more fans gravitating to the popularity of mixed martial arts and the UFC.

For the NFL, the high rate of injuries, specifically head injuries, could be the start of the league losing its luster, with more parents pulling their kids from youth football in favor of safer sports. The league addressed this in previous years with various tweaks to the kickoff, but that diminished the product with fewer returns, including last season which saw the lowest kickoff return rate in NFL history (21.8%). The San Francisco 49ers and Chiefs didn’t return a single kickoff with a combined 13 touchbacks in the Super Bowl to end the 2023 season.

But this drastic change that makes the kickoff a different play could be the type of innovation the NFL needs to make the game safer and more exciting at the same time. The league, however, has given itself a way out by creating the option of scrapping the new kickoff rules after a year, but it’s at least a start to potentially having impactful changes.

“They were not in a position to come up with a radical rule like this because you don’t do that when you’re in first place,” Schwartzstein says. “When you’re a minor league like the XFL, you have to think of unique things. So being able to sit and watch and see how it works and then make it work for what you want to do. I think that’s great the NFL is doing that and they took a chance on something.”

Perhaps for these new rules to stay for the long haul it’s going to require the creativity special teams coordinators have expressed during interviews this offseason.

Ficken admits he has spent plenty of time thinking about how to best use Chargers kicker Cameron Dicker because bounce kicks could be the key for coverage teams to prevent lengthy returns while also creating opportunities for takeaways, with balls that hit the ground being considered live. But Ficken has also emphasized the small details, such as making sure his players know that every kick in the end zone needs to be either returned or downed.

“It’s a lot of endless thoughts going on,” Ficken says. “You’ll be at home, like, ‘Oh, I got a great idea for this’ and just gotta jot it down. It’s exciting right now in terms of how we’re trying to come up with things and be creative. At the end of the day, you also gotta make sure you’re simple in terms of we can’t get too creative in which it’s taking away from actually being a master in something.

“Learning the rules, we gotta make sure we get aligned correctly, understand it’s a very completely different play. Technique, fundamentals, spacing, timing, all that’s different. It’s not anything similar to the modern day of what we’ve seen in terms of football, so there’s a lot of things that we’re working through. Let’s simulate this and coaching through on what we think will be the best technique.”

Schwartzstein, one of the on-air voices for Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats, the alternate streaming broadcast for Thursday Night Football, said he had spoken to about 13 NFL teams and all of them had a different take on what’s the best strategy for the new kickoff rules. Schwartzstein simulated the unique kickoff over a thousand times during his days with the XFL and he’s also unsure about how the play will look starting tonight, when the Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens kick off the season.

“I can make an assumption, but I have never seen it, either,” Schwartzstein says. “I don’t think anyone has watched more of these style kickoffs, the low-impact kickoffs as they call it, and I still don’t know what to expect from some of these teams.”

Rams special teams coordinator Chase Blackburn declined to share his creative ideas with the hopes of surprising opponents during the season. But he did suggest that he and other coaches might not wait long to show their best tricks because there’s a strong chance the best-prepared teams could steal victories early in the season from the ones struggling to adjust to the new rules.

Blackburn's strategy for the NFL's new dynamic kickoff: "By Week 3, you’ll see different designs, different personnel groupings. You can steal ball games early in the season. Those are things that will help you make the playoff push in the end." / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

“By Week 3, you’ll see different designs, different personnel groupings,” Blackburn says. “You can steal ball games early in the season. Those are things that will help you make the playoff push in the end.

“It’s going to be a lot of keep away. You’re going to see kickers come into play, with their style of touch passes, putting it in spots, hitting areas, hitting the open grass, which is easier said than done, but these guys are pretty talented across the league.”

Blackburn got a head start on the new kickoff rules when he was working out kickers in the lead up to the 2024 NFL draft. This was a priority for the Rams, who were in search of a kicker before selecting Stanford product Joshua Karty in the sixth round. With the rule changes approved before the draft, teams such as the Rams were able to scout the right kickers for the new play.

“I worked out five or six top guys,” Blackburn says. “We hit regular kickoffs in case the rules didn’t change. We had an idea it was going to possibly happen, that’s where I started practicing some of that stuff. Things that I had thought, ‘Hey, can we do this? If we lean the ball this way will it work?’ I was kind of using those guys to help me through in the offseason because I couldn’t work with our players at the time.”

Versatile kickers will be valuable and the same can be said about returners who have the size to withstand the first wave of defenders while also having enough speed to break away for the long gains. That’s why many are expecting running backs to handle more of the return duties.

Williams is unsure if he’ll be asked to return kicks, but he is in favor of the new rules changes, especially if it leads to better starting field position for his offense.

“We’re definitely protecting the players and the safety of the game, but it’s also definitely cool to be able to see the game evolve, to be able to find new ways to be able to make explosive plays,” Williams says. “I really feel like that’s what this kickoff allows for teams to be able to make those explosive plays in the kicking game, to be able to find those one seam cuts, similar to the running game that allows you to make those scores.”

There are many opinions about how to best utilize this new play, but the person probably best qualified to speak on this subject still expects the fastest players in the league to make the kickoff exciting again. Perhaps in two decades Devin Hester won’t be alone as the only kick returner to make the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“There are a lot of 4.2s in the NFL, none in the XFL,” Schwartzstein says. “Xavier Worthy going in the first round for the Chiefs, he gives them an added element of something I have never seen in the play.

“I personally think the faster guys you can have, so teams can’t establish the second and third level of their defense or their coverage, that’ll have a huge advantage. Running backs will do great, but nothing beats speed in football.”

Schwartzstein never imagined the NFL would adopt one of his unique plays when he gathered the best minds in football six years ago to provide the best set of rules for the XFL. He did have hopes, though, of youth football leagues across the country adopting his kickoff rules to make the game safer.

That hasn’t happened, but perhaps that could come soon if the NFL has success with the revamped kickoff in 2024. If so, Schwartzstein will be getting many thank yous for years to come.