The National Football League is run by a cabal of tinkerers. Every offseason, the tinkerers assemble together and brainstorm ways to make modifications to the game that take us incrementally further way from what we are familiar with. It’s rare that these changes make many people happy.
The latest to get people up in arms is a one-year experiment that will allow return teams to call for a fair catch anywhere on the field on a kickoff and have the line of scrimmage set to the 25-yard line as though it were a touchback.
While the purpose of the change is to try to make the play safer, with the league citing some dubious data about kickoffs being more dangerous and more susceptible to producing concussions, many feel the unintended consequences will be more harmful—particularly to those players who make their money as return specialists, like Gunner Olszewski, who shared his opinion with Chris Adamski of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
“I don’t like hearing guys who don’t sound like they understand football making decisions on our game”, he told the reporter. He then said that he wasn’t going to complain before quickly adding, “I hate it. I think it stinks for guys who are [special] teams and guys who try to go out and get jobs and make a name for themselves”.
“They’re taking chances away from us”.
And in this case, Olszewski is very much including himself in the ‘us’ in question. A former college free agent out of Bemidji St., he caught on with the New England Patriots and even earned All-Pro distinction in 2020, posting a 17.3-yard punt return average with a touchdown.
New England opted not to tender him last year as a restricted free agent, however, and after three seasons with the Patriots he signed with the Steelers in 2022 on a two-year, $4.2 million deal. He did lose his return role within a few games, but is hoping to regain it this season. And he doesn’t need his role to be devalued any further for what he sees as dubiously-obtainable intentions.
“You can’t un-dangerous the game of football, in my opinion”, he told Adamski, adding what we commonly hear from players regarding safety initiatives, that it’s football and it’s what they signed up for. In other words, they knew what the risks were beforehand.
As mentioned earlier, the rule is effective only on a one-year trial basis, so it if proves to be unsuccessful or otherwise undesirable, it won’t necessarily be made a permanent change. We have seen other one-year experiments come and go, perhaps most infamously the rule change a few years back to allow defensive pass interference to be reviewable. I think this one, though, has a better chance of sticking than that one did.
