2025 NFL kickoffs: Rules change led to most returns in history - ESPN

The NFL appears to have fixed concerns with the kickoff. Now the league will have to hope it doesn't break again.

A year after a major overhaul and six months after a seemingly minor tweak, teams have returned 78.3% of kickoffs during the first four weeks of the season — the highest rate over that period in 19 years. The NFL has seen 519 kickoff returns, the most through Week 4 in its history.

Coaches have reacted strongly to moving the touchback from the 30-yard line in 2024 to the 35 this season, refusing to concede the additional 5 yards. The return rate has more than doubled from last season and has more than tripled the 2023 rate. Health data is not yet available, but if the concussion rate established during the first phase of the overhaul in 2024 carries over, the NFL will have achieved its goal of revitalizing the play while reducing its injury risk.

"'Mission accomplished' would be the way I would describe it," said Walt Anderson, the NFL's officiating rules analyst. «It has certainly brought the play back into the game, and it seems to be in a very consistent pattern.»

Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, a member of the league's competition committee, said «it's doing exactly what we intended it to do» and added: «I think that we're all learning and growing regarding best practices, schematically how to strategize things to do, how to position players. Some of the size of the players in certain positions have changed, and so we're all absorbing a lot of tape and we're all learning and growing as we go in this thing, in terms of the best way to position ourselves to take advantage of the new opportunities in the play.»

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