I am extremely skeptical that this will reduce injuries. The kickoff in the NFL in recent years is basically a non-play. I'm not sure how you can even get hurt most of the time as the ball isn't even returned. How is a kickoff that puts the ball in play virtually every time going to lead to fewer injuries?
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I don't think that's the point, is it? Seems to me that all of the other recent changes were meant to reduce injuries, but it came at the cost of basically eliminating kickoffs from the game. This is meant to be a compromise that makes the play relevant again but hopefully still keeps the injury level low, albeit not as low as straight touchbacks.
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Because they don't want a non play. They want a play that is safer than traditional kickoffs but is also worth watching. They're trying to fix their overcorrection.
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I'll say this, I now hope more than I ever have that Hardman does not return to the Chiefs.
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I was having a conversation with a non-sports-fan, woman coworker a while back about football. She noted how complicated all the rules are compared to other sports, and it occurred to me that you almost have to treat "competitions" on a spectrum of "pure athleticism" on one end (e.g., olympic sports) and "purely made up rules" (e.g., board games) on the other end.

We like to pretend that football is closer to the olympics than board games, but there's no question that the rules of football are a lot closer to board games than we'd like to admit. They're made up. They're complicated. It takes a long time to understand what's going on if you aren't already familiar with it. But if you just accept that the game is driven by a series of arbitrary rules designed to just make it fun to watch, it kind of clicks. My coworker actually seemed to "get it" more after explaining it that way.

This seems to be yet another piece that pushes the game toward the "board game" end of the spectrum. It's weird, but there's no question it'll be more entertaining.
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The onside kick is basically being killed.

As if it wasn't hard enough to achieve, now you can only use it in the 4th quarter when losing, and you have to announce that you're doing it.

It's just a dead play now.
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I like it. I remember watching the XFL and thinking that they should adopt this. Though i do wish someone had a mashup video of numerous XFL kickoffs, just to get a real idea of what we're expecting.
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So this eliminated like 0.3% of all onside kicks? I don't understand why people act like surprise onside kicks happen so often.

And didn't they also bring back being able to overload one side of the field on onside kicks with this rule?
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Worth a shot. What they were doing was straight trash
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It feels like the NFL is slowly morphing into the XFL
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Good luck explaining football rules already to a casual fan.
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Not a Fan of this new rule
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What do you expect? As society becomes softer, the NFL follows suit.
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We have Toub and I think this will become an advantage for us. The kickoff rules before today were just painful and ceremonial most of the time. I like this because we will master it earlier and be a big part of our 3-peat!
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No fair catches on kickoff's either so this should be fun
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