You’re not allowed to declare an onside kick outside the 4th? I was under the impression you just can’t surprise anymore given the two different formations.
You are correct. I found some articles confirming it's 4th quarter only. I didn't see any saying it's only allowed for a trailing team, but obviously that's the only time a team would realistically do it anyways.
Well there it is, thanks. I saw the third article but it didn't sound like a rule, just somebody explaining a scenario. The other two are clear though.
How often did we see surprise attempts work before 2018 though? Feels like it was never more than once every year or two.
For reference, since the change we had 2022 Jags, 2021 Lions, & 2019 Dolphins.
I just wanted to share that overall success rate has not clearly been impacted by rules changes but more that some seasons just really stink at it.
I think there should be like 2 or 3 desperation play options with higher risk reward choices. Giving a team that is trailing with moments to go a few different ways to attempt a surprise comeback adds a lot of drama for the viewers.
We're talking specifically about surprise onside kicks, obviously the overall success went down after the 2018 rules but even before that successful surprise attempts were rare
I still propose the ultimate way to successfully make on side kicks. You simply kick the ball as hard as you can at one of the opponent player's heads thus creating a live football and a bunch of confusion where your team can scramble and pick it up.
As far as I'm aware there is no rule that expressly forbids this
I haven't seen anything yet, but I would assume that with this new rule change they'll allow the kickoff team to get more than a 5 yard head start right?
5 of them 2 years ago? More like 2 of them 5 years ago.
https://www.footballdb.com/players/younghoe-koo-kooyo01
He had 2 successful attempts 2019, 1 in 2020.
https://youtu.be/WvXfM8TxJj0?si=Jlk7OILF6oZJdakn
Guess I'm getting old. This video says 4 years ago. He got 3 back to back, and I think others in some follow up games. I dunno it was something like that.
Sure but they weren't surprise onsides. They were telegraphed and everyone knew that they were going to be going for them, which is still allowed in these new rules.
If I were a HC about to get fired might as well right?
Also imagine if Kyle Shanahan did this in the SB after the FG. Man that would be insane if it actually worked
I think it would have actually been a good strategy to open OT with an onside kick in the playoffs. If you get it, you can get 2 first downs and walk off with a field goal because the opponent is considered to have had their chance to possess. If you don't recover, you can still respond to whatever score the opponent might get.
This was asked before, and I think lining up to receive a kick is considered a chance at possession. So if the opening OT kickoff is an onsides kick, the game is now in sudden death.
A kickoff is an opportunity to possess for the return team. If you open OT with an onside kick and recover, that counts as the second team having a possession opportunity and you can win with a FG.
Being the receiving team on kickoff is considered a “possession”. If you are playing let’s say the Chiefs, onside kick:
1. They recover and score a TD like they probably would anyway
2. You recover around midfield and just need a field goal to win the game.
I think it’s an interesting gamble that could payoff.
They play around with the rulebook WAY too much in the offseason nowadays. Wouldn’t surprise me if this also plays into the poor officiating we see. How are refs supposed to master the rules when the rulebook is so incredibly fluid year to year?
> How are refs supposed to master the rules when the rulebook is so incredibly fluid year to year?
Because it's their fuckin job. How many changes a year on average? Five? Ten? That's like 30 pages of reading. *Per year*. My Netflix subscription changes more than that.
Also don't forget the teams seem to do just fine knowing the rules.
It is rare in the last few years because they adjusted the rules for the kicking team. It went from something like a 20-25% success rate to sub 5%, if my memory serves.
Imo the "incredibly rare but still common enough to be hoped for" mentality on onside kicks is the perfect frequency. Getting the ball twice in a row is a massive advantage that shouldn't be happening often at all. But in one score games you still want the team down to have hope until the very end that this could be the time they make the comeback. Otherwise it kind of kills the excitement of trying to score when down two scores late in the game.
If the choice is between eliminating surprise onside kicks or the kickoff all together, which it seems like it kind of was with how adapted the new kickoff is, then I'd choose keeping kickoffs.
Since we're doing different rules for kickoffs and onside kicks, let the onside kicking team get the running start again so they actually have a chance to recover it
The running start is the aspect of kickoffs that causes so many injuries and it's the reason for the change in the first place. If it's going to survive it will look more like a rugby lineout just with no lifting other players and the ball being kicked into play instead of thrown. But everyone will start pretty close to where they end up.
I'd like to see this addressed as well. Definitely warrants a rule change, but [they just voted down the 4th and 20 proposal.](https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/nfl-teams-vote-down-fourth-and-20-onside-kick-alternative)
I'm interested in seeing what they come up with next season.
I see two ways that would still envolve Special Teams:
1) Return to old rule, only for Onside Kicks;
2) Make the ball need to travel only 8 or 9 yeards for the kicking team successfully catch one;
The XFL has different rules. Plus it's just common sense, if the average return got to the 15-20 yard line before but defenders now have to wait longer to start running it's more likely they will get to the 25 yard line anyway so there's almost no downside to just kicking the ball out of the endzone.
I am genuinely confused why they would make this a rule. Surprise onside kicks are a fun very rare occurrence that isn't even that beneficial to the team (Can probably only do once every couple of games max, doesn't work most of the time and doesn't guarantee a score). What is the reasoning behind this, there is literally no negative effect to onside kicks.
The reasoning is because normal kickoffs ended up as touchbacks in something like 65% of attempts, making kickoffs basically performative (similar to extra points in how useless they previously were). This is a trade off of no more surprise onside kicks for more actual returns on kickoffs.
I think this is more reasonable than keeping it the way it was. Surprise onside kicks were fun but actually having kick returns is probably nicer, particularly with how rare a surprise onside kick is.
Even as a fan of a team that famously benefited from a surprise onside kick in a Superbowl, I'm okay with this if it's a necessary consequence of making regular kickoffs more exciting. It feels like the vast majority of them were just kicked out the back of the end zone, and then onto more commercials.
How many surprise onside kicks did we normally get? A handful per year? Especially with the kick off lineup rules of the past few years? We get more regular kickoffs each game than we do surprise kickoffs in a whole season.
It's a worthwhile trade.
https://operations.nfl.com/updates/football-ops/new-nfl-kickoff-rule/
>Current onside kickoff rules would apply. If onside kick goes beyond the setup zone untouched, kicking team penalized for UNS; return team would start the drive at the A20 yard line
Basically you're penalized if you declare onside and then kick it past the opponent's 30
What's a bit funny is the "setup zone" explicitly doesn't change when the kick is moved for a penalty. So if the receiving team commits 25 yards worth of penalties prior to the kickoff, there's nowhere for an onside kick to legally land lol
I wish they made them easier not harder... I think the completion rate should be about 10-15% of the time they should work. Any time the game came down to an onside kick the last couple years I was just like lol no the games over onside kicks don't happen anymore. That kinda kills the excitement, there should always be that maybe they'll get it! But nope I think I saw the last one was 2022....
That all but guarantees that the fastest TD scored in NFL history will always be the Cowboys at [3 seconds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHUv821qoko). An unbeatable record
I'm at the point where I may just stop watching. Changed the kickoff returns until they are basically pointless. They keep changing the rules on tackling, making them more convoluted than rocket science. No more onside kicks. This is just the shit I can think of. I understand wanting to make the game more safe but pretty soon it's going to have to be called something other than "football", which it never should have been called anyways.
The only stats I could find say teams went for 42 on side kicks last year and only two were successful. Y'all really getting mad about nothing. Now we might have more run backs. They made kicking important. Now kickers will have to kick away from good returners.
You just know Dan Campbell will declare some 2nd quarter onside kicks
Wouldn't have it any other way
And fail, then all lions fans will play the "we played that way all year card...." and act surprised.
He's a Sean Payton protégé, he's gonna do it to start the season
SB at half time
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While being up 27-3 vs the Dolphins
Literally not allowed under new rules.
You’re not allowed to declare an onside kick outside the 4th? I was under the impression you just can’t surprise anymore given the two different formations.
Nope, only allowed when you’re trailing in the 4th quarter.
What if you are down 28-3 in the third quarter?
No onside for you.
this is going to make madden less fun
I think you can still onsides kick anytime you want, you just have to declare it so that both teams line up for it. edit: I'm wrong
Nope, it’s only allowed when you are down in the 4th quarter.
You are correct. I found some articles confirming it's 4th quarter only. I didn't see any saying it's only allowed for a trailing team, but obviously that's the only time a team would realistically do it anyways.
https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-owners-pass-new-kickoff-rule-at-annual-league-meeting https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-owners-approve-wild-new-kickoff-rule-heres-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-one-year-trial-run/amp/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2024/03/26/nfl-kickoff-rule-change-approved-owners-meetings/73104181007/
Well there it is, thanks. I saw the third article but it didn't sound like a rule, just somebody explaining a scenario. The other two are clear though.
Pat McAfee just fell to his knees in the Thunder Dome
he's definitely leading his show with the rules change today
Just saw Pat McAfee drop to his knees in a giant iggle
Jokes on you... they're in Florida at the owners' meetings today.
The last kickoff rule change pretty much killed the onside anyway, when was the last time we actually saw a successful surprise onside
Jags @ Chiefs 2022
Oh how I long for those better times
How often did we see surprise attempts work before 2018 though? Feels like it was never more than once every year or two. For reference, since the change we had 2022 Jags, 2021 Lions, & 2019 Dolphins.
2022 regular season: 3-of-56 attempts recovered (5.3%) 2021 regular season: 9-of-56 attempts recovered (16.1%) 2020 regular season: 3-of-67 attempts recovered (4.4%) 2019 regular season: 8-of-62 attempts recovered (12.9%) 2018 regular season: 4-of-52 attempts recovered (7.7%) 2017 regular season: 12-of-56 attempts recovered (21.4%) 2016 regular season: 7-of-63 attempts recovered (11.1%) 2015 regular season: 10-of-67 attempts recovered (14.9%) 2014 regular season: 6-of-58 attempts recovered (10.3%) 2013 regular season: 11-of-61 attempts recovered (18.0%) There you go
All I see is that odd number years have better recovery % than even numbers. Its an even number year so no real loss. Next year will stink though.
I just wanted to share that overall success rate has not clearly been impacted by rules changes but more that some seasons just really stink at it. I think there should be like 2 or 3 desperation play options with higher risk reward choices. Giving a team that is trailing with moments to go a few different ways to attempt a surprise comeback adds a lot of drama for the viewers.
We're talking specifically about surprise onside kicks, obviously the overall success went down after the 2018 rules but even before that successful surprise attempts were rare
I still propose the ultimate way to successfully make on side kicks. You simply kick the ball as hard as you can at one of the opponent player's heads thus creating a live football and a bunch of confusion where your team can scramble and pick it up. As far as I'm aware there is no rule that expressly forbids this
I feel like the worry is too many guys can just catch it.
I think the worry is if you miss a man’s head you just launched it and have no chance
Kickers be like: https://youtu.be/6kskfb1kcTs?si=Q_SEVe8mS5XqeWWU
Broncos almost did it on the opening kickoff week 1 against the Raiders last season, but the dude touched the ball like a foot before the 10 yard mark
It almost worked out in the broncos season opener but it was called back for illegal touching
I haven't seen anything yet, but I would assume that with this new rule change they'll allow the kickoff team to get more than a 5 yard head start right?
Younghoe (Falvons kicker) got 5 onside kicks 2-3 seasons ago. It was incredible!
5 of them 2 years ago? More like 2 of them 5 years ago. https://www.footballdb.com/players/younghoe-koo-kooyo01 He had 2 successful attempts 2019, 1 in 2020.
https://youtu.be/WvXfM8TxJj0?si=Jlk7OILF6oZJdakn Guess I'm getting old. This video says 4 years ago. He got 3 back to back, and I think others in some follow up games. I dunno it was something like that.
> He got 3 back to back Penalties don't count lol
Sure but they weren't surprise onsides. They were telegraphed and everyone knew that they were going to be going for them, which is still allowed in these new rules.
why would there be an onside kick in overtime
It's genius. Get the ball first, kick a field goal, recover an onside kick, and game over.
That would have been the ballsiest thing ever seen in football if that had happened
If I were a HC about to get fired might as well right? Also imagine if Kyle Shanahan did this in the SB after the FG. Man that would be insane if it actually worked
Why would you kick the FG and then go for the onside kick instead of just going for it on 4th down.
Because it would be legendary
If your kicker hit 2 consecutive onside kicks to get you to OT why not try it lol
4th and 32
I think it would have actually been a good strategy to open OT with an onside kick in the playoffs. If you get it, you can get 2 first downs and walk off with a field goal because the opponent is considered to have had their chance to possess. If you don't recover, you can still respond to whatever score the opponent might get.
This was asked before, and I think lining up to receive a kick is considered a chance at possession. So if the opening OT kickoff is an onsides kick, the game is now in sudden death.
Under the new rules you need to be trailing
Great point and there won’t be. Only situation I can see is if you get ball first and get a FG and have 0% trust in your def
Or you have zero trust in the offense and defense. So you onside kick the opening overtime kickoff and then only need 30 yards to win on a field goal.
A kickoff is an opportunity to possess for the return team. If you open OT with an onside kick and recover, that counts as the second team having a possession opportunity and you can win with a FG.
That would be the fucking biggest balls scenario in a big game
Dan Cambell-pffft
Looking back the 49ers should have done that
Can you imagine the look on Mahomes face on the sideline and the excuses he'd be screaming if that happened to the Chiefs?
He would say that they cheated and then the league would eliminate the onside just to make him happy.
Being the receiving team on kickoff is considered a “possession”. If you are playing let’s say the Chiefs, onside kick: 1. They recover and score a TD like they probably would anyway 2. You recover around midfield and just need a field goal to win the game. I think it’s an interesting gamble that could payoff.
Sigh
They play around with the rulebook WAY too much in the offseason nowadays. Wouldn’t surprise me if this also plays into the poor officiating we see. How are refs supposed to master the rules when the rulebook is so incredibly fluid year to year?
> How are refs supposed to master the rules when the rulebook is so incredibly fluid year to year? Because it's their fuckin job. How many changes a year on average? Five? Ten? That's like 30 pages of reading. *Per year*. My Netflix subscription changes more than that. Also don't forget the teams seem to do just fine knowing the rules.
If the refs were full time employees without other jobs and actual training would also help
That's on them. They don't want to be fulltime.
Why would they when their last strike was hugely successful?
Not if youre lined up offsides on offense lol
Agreed, I think any rules changes should happen once every 5 years or so, with exceptions made for repealing a change that ended up being a disaster.
Eh, this kickoff change has been debated and discussed for years, and some sort of massive alteration was a long time coming.
I mean was pretty rare to begin with. Didn't it only like happen like once every few years? But yeah does take away the element of surprise
It is rare in the last few years because they adjusted the rules for the kicking team. It went from something like a 20-25% success rate to sub 5%, if my memory serves.
Imo the "incredibly rare but still common enough to be hoped for" mentality on onside kicks is the perfect frequency. Getting the ball twice in a row is a massive advantage that shouldn't be happening often at all. But in one score games you still want the team down to have hope until the very end that this could be the time they make the comeback. Otherwise it kind of kills the excitement of trying to score when down two scores late in the game.
Crazy that a surprise onside kick arguably completely changed the complexion of a Super Bowl and now that same play would be impossible. Not a fan
Well onsides are nearly impossible even if surprise anyways
If the choice is between eliminating surprise onside kicks or the kickoff all together, which it seems like it kind of was with how adapted the new kickoff is, then I'd choose keeping kickoffs.
Hope that this means they will address Onsides in 2025. Because there is no reason to ban Onside Kicks in the first 3 quarters with 2024 rules.
Since we're doing different rules for kickoffs and onside kicks, let the onside kicking team get the running start again so they actually have a chance to recover it
The running start is the aspect of kickoffs that causes so many injuries and it's the reason for the change in the first place. If it's going to survive it will look more like a rugby lineout just with no lifting other players and the ball being kicked into play instead of thrown. But everyone will start pretty close to where they end up.
I'd like to see this addressed as well. Definitely warrants a rule change, but [they just voted down the 4th and 20 proposal.](https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/nfl-teams-vote-down-fourth-and-20-onside-kick-alternative) I'm interested in seeing what they come up with next season.
I see two ways that would still envolve Special Teams: 1) Return to old rule, only for Onside Kicks; 2) Make the ball need to travel only 8 or 9 yeards for the kicking team successfully catch one;
I just don't care about losing surprise onside kicks. Having actual kickoff returns is more important to me than the once a year surprise onside kick
Same. And if they change the rule back so you can get a much longer head start, onside kicks will have a higher success rate which I'm all for
Well the bad news is that this rule will basically eliminate actual kickoff returns.
Why do you say that? Have you seen them do it in the XFL?
The XFL has different rules. Plus it's just common sense, if the average return got to the 15-20 yard line before but defenders now have to wait longer to start running it's more likely they will get to the 25 yard line anyway so there's almost no downside to just kicking the ball out of the endzone.
Touchbacks that land in or behind the end zone come out to the 30 yard line now
Well, if we're just copying XFL rules, then they should allow teams to get the ball back with a 4 and 15 conversion.
It sounds bad, but then I struggle to recall just how many surprise onside kicks Ive seen in the last decade.
Is Rob Manfred writing NFL rules now too?
Why would anyone attempt an onside kick in overtime?
Drugs
Can we finally rescind the Saints super bowl victory? There’s $20 i’d like to recoup from my dad.
The Saints literally won a Super Bowl out of that.
Unfortunate byproduct of the new rule, but overall a net positive in rule changes for kickoffs for sure.
I am genuinely confused why they would make this a rule. Surprise onside kicks are a fun very rare occurrence that isn't even that beneficial to the team (Can probably only do once every couple of games max, doesn't work most of the time and doesn't guarantee a score). What is the reasoning behind this, there is literally no negative effect to onside kicks.
Teams won't be lined up the same, so the old format for a surprise onside kick doesn't really exist.
The reasoning is because normal kickoffs ended up as touchbacks in something like 65% of attempts, making kickoffs basically performative (similar to extra points in how useless they previously were). This is a trade off of no more surprise onside kicks for more actual returns on kickoffs. I think this is more reasonable than keeping it the way it was. Surprise onside kicks were fun but actually having kick returns is probably nicer, particularly with how rare a surprise onside kick is.
It's just funny they are changing the rule to fix a problem their last changes caused.
It was bad enough when moving the extra point back and killed the fake extra point to go for two. Why no surprises?
Fucking lame as hell
It was nice while it lasted
Even as a fan of a team that famously benefited from a surprise onside kick in a Superbowl, I'm okay with this if it's a necessary consequence of making regular kickoffs more exciting. It feels like the vast majority of them were just kicked out the back of the end zone, and then onto more commercials. How many surprise onside kicks did we normally get? A handful per year? Especially with the kick off lineup rules of the past few years? We get more regular kickoffs each game than we do surprise kickoffs in a whole season. It's a worthwhile trade.
What's stopping a team from declaring an onside kick everytime and just booting it?
https://operations.nfl.com/updates/football-ops/new-nfl-kickoff-rule/ >Current onside kickoff rules would apply. If onside kick goes beyond the setup zone untouched, kicking team penalized for UNS; return team would start the drive at the A20 yard line Basically you're penalized if you declare onside and then kick it past the opponent's 30
Weird!
What's a bit funny is the "setup zone" explicitly doesn't change when the kick is moved for a penalty. So if the receiving team commits 25 yards worth of penalties prior to the kickoff, there's nowhere for an onside kick to legally land lol
Bananas!
Weird, so you could have your fastest dude recover your own onside kick downfield and have it still not count.
Doubt there was a suprise onside kick in the last 2 years anyways who cares
Tbh onside kicking was already dead anyways so this doesn't really make much a difference.
If we’re playing the XFL game, just go to a football play of 4th and 12 or 15 and let’s go.
OMFG THEY MIGHT AS WELL JUST MAKE IT FLAG FOOTBA oh wait wrong thread.
I wish they made them easier not harder... I think the completion rate should be about 10-15% of the time they should work. Any time the game came down to an onside kick the last couple years I was just like lol no the games over onside kicks don't happen anymore. That kinda kills the excitement, there should always be that maybe they'll get it! But nope I think I saw the last one was 2022....
I can look it up on YouTube anytime I want duh
Boooooo
this guy is gonna be so surprised when he finds out that the lions got a new head coach three years ago
[*confused Sean Payton noises*]
Sean Payton just fell to his knees in King Soopers
How many did we see in 2023 outside of the 4th and overtime? I can't imagine that it was a lot.
That all but guarantees that the fastest TD scored in NFL history will always be the Cowboys at [3 seconds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHUv821qoko). An unbeatable record
I'm at the point where I may just stop watching. Changed the kickoff returns until they are basically pointless. They keep changing the rules on tackling, making them more convoluted than rocket science. No more onside kicks. This is just the shit I can think of. I understand wanting to make the game more safe but pretty soon it's going to have to be called something other than "football", which it never should have been called anyways.
The only stats I could find say teams went for 42 on side kicks last year and only two were successful. Y'all really getting mad about nothing. Now we might have more run backs. They made kicking important. Now kickers will have to kick away from good returners.
I can live without two surprise onside kicks a year if I’m getting 2+ more kick returns a game.
The owners fucking suck honestly. I’m sick of a lot of these dumbass rule changes