Under the old kickoff rules, kickoff distance wasn’t the only factor. Like a punt, hang time mattered as much as anything, a high-arching boot far more valuable than a low-line missile. The longer the ball is in the air, the more time the returner has to wait, the more seconds the kick coverage team has to get down to make the tackle.
Say goodbye to all that. Like many other aspects of the new kickoff rule changes, hang time is an element tossed out the window. And special teams coordinator Danny Smith knows it.
“Just the catch of the kick is new,” he said via a team provided-transcript last Tuesday. “Hang time is out of the game. You can hang that thing six seconds, ain’t nobody going nowhere. You know, so it’s [hang time] a waste of time. So now you get line drives, you are getting balls on the ground, you’re getting different catches. So, it’s different for [the returners] as well.”
Smith’s comments come from one key change in the rulebook. With the coverage team pushed up to the opposing 40-yard line, 5-to-10 yards away from the return unit, neither side can move until either the ball hits the ground or the returner fields the kick. Meaning, as Smith noted, the ball could be in the air for 10 seconds and it makes no difference. The coverage team must wait.
It could change the structure of the kick. Especially against teams like the Steelers, who have a dangerous returner like Cordarrelle Patterson. Teams could easily drive low-line kicks away from him, essentially taking him out of the return equation. That does come with risk, a line-drive could take a hop and take a more unpredictable bounce but would be a way to mitigate the threat of Patterson running one back the distance.
This change also lends credence to the idea of teams not using a traditional kicker at all, as clubs like the Kansas City Chiefs have experimented with. If hang time doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t, another player with an informal kicking background in soccer or rugby could get the job done with line-drive boots. And it would give the kicking unit an extra true defender and tackler.
Despite the radical nature of this look, Smith is excited by the challenge. It makes kickoffs fun and a real play again complete with strategy and variation that had slowly been squeezed out by the league over the past decade. Its impact remains to fully be seen and this is still just a one-year trial run, but Smith can say with confidence that kicker hang time is no more.
