New Kickoff Rules

[miloofcroton]

There's a recent rule suggestion that, to be honest, makes a lot of sense to me. They want to offer a 4th down conversation situation instead of an onside kick. One addition to this rule makes it valid (I hate it otherwise), and another addition makes it awesome.

First, we completely replace kickoffs with 4th down situations. Every single kickoff can be converted. It's 4th down and 15 on your own 25. Are you realistically going to go for it in the 1st quarter? Hell no. You'll punt it. Therefore, punts would replace kickoffs for most game situations. Punts are far more dynamic than kickoffs, so I see this as a win. They are arguably safer than kickoffs, so everyone is happy.

Two, and this is where it becomes awesome. We change punt rules by allowing onside punts. Now, we can still have onside kicks (not kicked from the ground but punted) AND we have the additional complexity that punts have versus kickoffs.

If you want to see this in action, check out these articles:

https://deadspin.com/good-old-canada-has-gifted-us-another-onside-punt-1819247502

https://screengrabber.deadspin.com/onside-punt-touchdown-is-a-true-gift-from-canada-1721881914

Fun fact: this used to be a rule in football!

It works like this: any player who is onside (behind the ball carrier/kicker) can recover a kick; furthermore, these recoveries can be advanced. In that, this is really the fault of Toronto’s A.J. Jefferson—an American playing his first year in the CFL—who didn’t realize he had to tackle Tiger-Cats defensive back Brandon Stewart once he recovered the punt. Stewart, thus, got up off the ground and marched to the end zone.

Again, Rog, put this rule back into the American game. (It existed, a century ago.)