Kickoff Returns Are Changing: Here's Why That Matters

Photo: USA Today Sports

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If you haven't been paying attention to the offseason special teams news (which somehow never seems to rank high on anyone's to-do list), you might be surprised when you tune into your first football game to see that the opening kickoff looks... a little bit different. Last spring, the NFL's competition committee voted for a one-year trial of a new kickoff return. To bring you up to speed, I'll cover what's changing, why it's changing, and, most importantly for our purposes, what this might mean for fantasy football.

The Old Kickoff Returns Were Broken

Under the old kickoff return rules, the kicking team lined up on one side of the field, the receiving team lined up on the other side, and both teams started running full speed at each other as soon as the ball was kicked. This resulted in some of the highest-speed collisions we would ever see on a football field, which (unsurprisingly) made the kickoff the most dangerous play in football, especially in terms of brain injuries.

With growing concern about the long-term effects of repeated concussions, the NFL started tinkering with the rules to make kickoff returns rarer. First, they moved the kicking team closer to the opposing end zone to increase touchbacks. Then, they set touchbacks to come back to the 25-yard line instead of the 20-yard line to discourage teams from returning kicks from the end zone.

These rules decreased kickoff return rates significantly-- from 80.1% in 2010 just before the rule changes to 53.6% in 2011 just after. Return rates continued to decline as kickers improved and teams adjusted, but eventually, teams landed on a new strategy-- intentionally kicking just short of the end zone to force a return and hopefully tackle the ball carrier short of the point of a touchback.

To combat this, the NFL added a new kickoff return rule last year. Now returners could signal for a fair catch at any point of the field (even short of the end zone) and the play would become an automatic touchback. This rule was devastatingly effective. The league returned an average of just over 1,000 kickoffs per year from 2020-2022; this total plummeted to 587 in 2023 as the return rate cratered to just 21.8%, by a huge margin the lowest mark in league history.

This reduction was great for player safety, but it was terrible for watchability. As the kickoff return rate marched inexorably toward 0%, many began to question the point of having returns at all. Why not just save time and automatically start the opposing team at their own 25 after every score?

The NFL, aware of the criticisms, wanted to bring back the kickoff return. But they wanted to do it in a form that would curb the toll it takes on NFL players. To do that, they looked to the XFL.

What Is Different About the New Kickoff Returns?

When the XFL was founded, it partnered with the NFL to serve as a "petri dish" to test proposed rule changes. One of the biggest changes it tested was an alternate kickoff return. Their experiment proved to be a huge success; the league saw 97% of all kickoffs returned while keeping injury rates in line with a typical play from scrimmage. (The USFL, which uses a similar rule, saw a 94% return rate.)

This article from the NFL's operations department runs down the full list of changes with the new kickoff, but here's a summary. 

Instead of lining both teams up on opposite sides of the field and letting them run full-speed at each other, the new kickoff return rule mandates that 10 players from the kicking team line up at the opposing 40-yard line, while 9-11 players from the returning team line up five yards away, between their own 30- and 35-yard line. Instead of moving as soon as the ball is kicked, the players lined up in these areas cannot move until the ball is touched by the returner or hits the ground.

Before that contact, the only players who are permitted to move freely are the kicker (who will start at his own 35-yard line, just like before) and the 0-2 players the return team opts to line up in the "Landing Zone", or the area between the end zone and the 20-yard line.

With this restriction, kickoff returns will look more like traditional offensive plays with players from opposing teams starting just five yards away from each other before contact.

Any kick that falls short of the landing zone results in a penalty on the kicking team and possession at the 40-yard line (similar to kickoffs that go out of bounds). Any kick that goes out of the end zone or lands in the end zone and is downed by the receiving team results in a touchback, but now touchbacks will come out to the 30-yard line (as opposed to the 25).

Most importantly, any kick that lands inside the landing zone is a live ball and must be returned. If a kick lands in the landing zone and rolls or bounces into the end zone, the receiving team may still down it, but the resulting touchback only comes out to the 20-yard line.

What Will The NFL Impact Be?

With its paltry 22% return rate last year, the NFL saw just 587 kickoff returns. That's an average of less than 1.1 return per team per game, by far the lowest mark in league history. If it matched the XFL's 97% return rate, that would rise to 2617 returns, or more than 4.8 per team per game, a record in the other direction.

The NFL is unlikely to see that same 97% return rate on kickoff returns, however. For starters, NFL kickers are much better and are starting 5 yards closer to the opposing end zone (at their own 35-yard line, compared to the 30-yard line in the XFL). Few XFL kickers could reliably kick past the goal line, so more kicks by necessity landed in the "mandatory kickoff return" zone.

Additionally, the XFL brought all touchbacks out to the 35-yard line, which meant kickers weren't heavily incentivized to aim for the end zone anyway; average starting field position following a kickoff return on kicks that landed between the 1 and the 20 was around the 29-yard line, so aiming for the field of play "saved" their team 5-6 yards per drive.

The NFL, however, is only bringing touchbacks out to the 30-yard line. I suspect many teams will decide that the ~1-yard difference in starting field position between a kick in the landing zone and a touchback isn't worth the downside risk of giving up a return touchdown-- especially when the kicking team is playing with a second-half lead.

Also, while XFL kicks that landed in the landing zone were returned to around the 29-yard line, on average, kickoff returns originating from the end zone only made it to the 22-yard line on average. (Please note that for the reasons mentioned above, the sample size is quite small here.)

I suspect many NFL kickers will aim for the front of the end zone and dare the receiving team to return it instead of taking the touchback. The downside risk (giving up an extra yard or two of starting field position while eliminating the possibility of a long kickoff return) is rather small, while the potential upside (perhaps 5-8 extra yards of starting field position if the gamble pays off) is rather higher.

Because of these factors, my first estimate when the full details of the rule change were announced was that the NFL would settle just above a 50% kickoff return rate. (A week after making that estimate, the NFL's operations department published the results of their study of the proposed rule, including a note that special teams coaches they interviewed estimated that between 50-60% of kickoffs would be returned.)

Officially, the new rule has only been approved for a single season. Competition committee chairman Rich McKay said after discussions that moving touchbacks from the 35 to the 30 was necessary to get enough support to pass the rule change, but that doing so also dropped the league's projected kickoff return rate from 80% to 50-60%. If the rule is popular, he left open the possibility of moving touchbacks back out to the 35 to continue to increase kickoff return rates.

If these disparate estimates prove accurate and the league has a return rate of around 55% on the same number of kickoffs, that would still be 1484 total kickoff returns, or 2.7 per team per game, more than 2.5 times as many as we saw last year and the most since the league moved the kickoff forward following the 2010 season.

What Will the Fantasy Impact Be?

Most leagues don't award points for return yardage, but if yours does, the impact of this change has the potential to be anything from "significant" to "league-altering" depending on where the return rate settles and how your league scores returns. To illustrate the potential impact, I'm going to look at historical data from three time periods: 2001-2003 (around the height of the kickoff return), 2011-2013 (the period right after the NFL started trying to curtail returns), and 2021-2023 (the recent low point that prompted the change).

There's no "standard scoring" for kickoff returns like there is for offense or defense and scoring systems can vary wildly. I've seen leagues that gave one point for every 100 return yards and leagues that count special teams yards just as highly as offensive yards (typically 1 point per 10 yards), along with everything in between and some systems that defy easy categorization.

To account for the variation, I'll look at the top special teams performer from each season along with how many fantasy points their special teams contributions would be worth in two scoring systems: 1 point per 25 yards and 1 point per 10 yards. I'll also note where that point total would have ranked them among all wide receivers that year.

This includes both kickoff returns and punt returns, but because the average kickoff return is more than 2.5 times longer than the average punt return, kickoffs contribute disproportionately to the overall totals.

Note that this is only looking at a player's contributions on special teams. Many players bolstered this total with offensive production; for instance, in 2001 Steve Smith added 10 receptions and 197 yards from scrimmage. It might not seem like much, but that extra 29.7 points would be enough to bump him up to 18th in 1-point-per-10-yard return leagues.

Similarly, players like Tyreek Hill and Antonio Brown have scored like top 5 receivers on offense while also adding another 20-30 points on special teams, further widening their lead over their peers in fantasy.

You should notice two things about this chart. First, in less generous scoring systems, players have never been able to achieve fantasy relevance through special teams alone (so we shouldn't expect them to start now). In 2002, Michael Lewis became the only player in history to lead the league in kickoff return and punt return yards in the same season. His 2432 return yards isn't just the highest mark in league history, it's more than 200 yards ahead of second place. Despite that, his special teams contributions would have left him WR62, barely worth a bench spot in most leagues.

In leagues like this, special teams contributions should only be considered a bonus. If a player has standalone value on offense, then adding returns can move him up the rankings-- sometimes significantly. But unless a player is already on fantasy radars, his returns won't matter.

On the other hand, in more generous scoring systems and more favorable return environments, players can be fantasy starters on the strength of special teams alone. In 1-point-per-10-yards scoring, several returners finished as strong weekly starters every year, and even in the era at the beginning of the kickoff return's decline (2011-2013), top special teamers were still solid WR3s or weekly flex options.

In recent seasons, that production has all but vanished. Xavier Gipson, last year's top returner, added 56.7 fantasy points on offense-- more than double what Steve Smith had in 2001-- but even in the most generous scoring system that only moved him up to WR49 for the year, not even a decent consideration for a weekly flex slot.

In fact, the best returners over the last three years have added about as much value in 1-point-per-10-yard return scoring as the best returners used to add in 1-point-per-25-yard return scoring.

With the new kickoff return rule, that will change in 2024. If the return rate settles in the 50-60% range, as predicted, that will bring leaguewide return totals back in line with the 2011-2013 averages. You can anticipate top returners finishing as fantasy WR3s in more generous scoring systems (and adding the rough equivalent of about 700 extra yards to their offensive production in less-generous systems).

If that kickoff return rate reaches 80% (as the competition committee seems to want), return totals will reach nearly as high as they were from 2001-2003 and the most productive returners will be strong weekly starters based on their special teams work alone.

And, while it's incredibly unlikely, if the kickoff return rate reaches the XFL's 97%, leaguewide return totals will be nearly 20% higher than their previous peak, and we'll be looking at an unprecedented era in return leagues (regardless of their specific scoring).

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