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The NFL made several rule changes this offseason, including spotting the ball at the 25-yard line after a fair catch on a kickoff.
Denver Broncos coach Sean Payton was not necessarily in favor of that rule, in part because it will make it harder to benefit from shorter kickoffs following a penalty.
“There’ll be, strategically, more opportunities where teams who are kicking the ball decide not to kick it high,” Payton said on June 14. “Let’s say there’s a foul on a scoring play, and you have it on the 50-yard line. You kick it in the air, they fair catch it and it’s at the 25. You don’t realize any of the penalty. I was kind of pushing for if that were the case, I would have thought that we would have put the ball on the 10 to realize the 15-yard personal foul, but that’s not the case.”
Payton believes that there could be unintended consequences of this new rule. If teams start kicking the ball low, it could bounce near the sideline, giving a returner an opportunity to field it with a foot out of bounds. That would technically put the ball “out of bounds,” a penalty that spots the ball at the 40-yard line.
“The last thing we’re going to do — unless we’re late in the game — is put it high in the air and start at the 25. Because of that, you’re going to see balls on the ground more. We just did a straddle rule [at practice]. You guys have all seen those balls near the sideline and the returners kind of in that dilemma of is it going out of bounds? If they’ve got a foot that is on the paint of the sideline and then touch the ball in play, it’s out of bounds and it goes to the 40. We call it straddle. I think we’re going to see that situation probably tick up a little bit as a result of the rule change.”
So after the NFL made an effort to reduce kickoffs and spot the ball at the 25-yard line after a fair catch, the result could instead be more teams kicking the ball low — hoping for a return. More low kicks could lead to more kicks going out of bounds and more “straddle” situations, which could mean more drives starting at the 40-yard line instead of the 25-yard line.
Unless kickers can avoid the sidelines, coaches might lobby for the NFL’s new fair catch rule to be one-and-done after the 2023 season.
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