The plan to discuss changes or the elimination of the kickoff are not going away. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently told TIME magazine he would consider taking kickoffs out of the game. "Whenever anything comes out of the Commissioner's office, I think it's appropriate to consider it serious," NFL executive vice president of football operations Ray Anderson told NFL.com's Ian Rapoport. "But every year the competition committee will look at several proposals to enhance player safety and certainly the kickoff play probably disproportionate our most dangerous play gets attention every year so like it did last year. "Coach Schiano's suggestion is one that has been proposed. Some folks think it's very intriguing and certainly, the subject of some pretty vigorous discussion and debate. But it will occur and it will be serious." Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Greg Schiano offered a scenario where, instead of kickoffs, teams can punt after or a score or attempt to convert fourth-and-15 to keep the ball. "Some people would say let's move the kickoff line forward even further," Anderson said. "Another suggestion would be to put weight limitations on the people who can run down on the kickoff play. The theory being that lighter weight guys colliding will be less detrimental than heavier weight guys colliding with smaller weighted guys. So that would be another idea. "Those will be two possible scenarios that I'm sure will get a lot of discussion." Coaches will have input on proposed changes, but the vote of 24 owners are needed to pass a rule change. "The way it works is the competition committee will do a serious evaluation, watch a lot of film, listen to a lot of input, including from coaches sub-committee and the general managers advisory committee on rule changes that are this significant," Anderson said. "The competition committee makes a recommendation to the ownership on a rule. "The owners by vote will be the ultimate determiners of whether or not a rule is either made or changed and I'm sure the coaches and GMs will be providing their strong opinions to their respective owners, particularly to a rule change like this." Source: NFL.com
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyybczaO7ac&feature=ytfce]Parting Shot: No Sense To No Kickoffs - YouTube[/ame]
[ame=http://www.nfl.com/videos/nfl-videos/0ap2000000107588/Eliminate-kickoffs]Eliminate kickoffs? - NFL Videos[/ame]
well, giving the scoring team an attempt at 4th and 15 'sort of' replaces the onside kick ........... however, we would never have 'surprise' early game on-side kicks, which are fun. and even though there are fewer kick-off returns than in the past, they are still getting returned for td's pretty regularly and those exciting plays would just be completely gone from the game.