Danny Smith is focused on the present. Making the 2024 Pittsburgh Steelers’ special teams as good as they can be. Right now, they’re among the best in football. But he knows things could look different in 2025, especially regarding the NFL’s kickoff rule changes.
Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Danny Smith revealed he met with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell before Monday night’s Steelers-Giants game to talk about the future of kickoffs.
“The commissioner was at the game on Monday night. He and I had a conversation before the game about that very thing,” Smith said via the team website on the topic of kickoffs. “Not that that conversation was private or secret or anything like that, but he mentioned some things to me that lead me to believe there’s a lot more discussion gonna happen after this season.”
Goodell was in Pittsburgh this weekend after surprising a local high school team and handing out Super Bowl tickets to a family of a child who beat cancer. Pittsburgh native Curtis Martin also attended.
The NFL made one of its most radical rule changes ever, adopting the XFL model of kickoffs and kick returns. What they call the new “dynamic kickoff” that pits the coverage and return team 5-yards apart, neither side allowed to move until the ball hits the ground or is fielded. The intent was two-fold. Increase the number of returns (touchbacks now come out to the 30-yard line) and reduce the number of head injuries by closing the space between the two teams, eliminating the full-speed “car crashes” that existed under the old model.
The latter’s impact has been evident. Per the league, there was just one concussion on kickoffs through the first six weeks after the league suffered eight in 2023, a year in which there were a historically low number of returns. Kick return average has increased to 27 yards per return, roughly three yards higher than the past several seasons. The Steelers, though, have mostly watched the ball either fly over their heads or be caught and downed in the end zone, returning just seven kicks all season. Of the teams who’ve yet to have a bye, only the Green Bay Packers (five) have fewer. Ace returner Cordarrelle Patterson, who has missed a month with an ankle injury, doesn’t have a single one.
For Danny Smith, it makes evaluating his unit and the rule difficult.
“It’s all the information we have,” Smith said. “Is it enough? No, man, I don’t think eight games is a study. But it is all the information we have. So we are using it a lot. I think you’ll see things. Discussions come up after the season to see where we go and, and how we go.”
When the NFL unveiled the rule change, it framed it as a one-year trial run with no commitment to 2025. This means they could go back to the “old” way next season. The college game hasn’t even adopted the change. They could tweak the current rules, moving touchbacks to the 35 to encourage more returns or making other alterations to the rule. Or they could eliminate kickoffs entirely, another drastic decision but the direction the league was headed prior to this year’s attempt.
Like anything new, there figure to be offseason changes now that the NFL has seen it function inside their own stadiums instead of conceptually or in the XFL and European leagues. Overall, it seems the framework of the change has been successful. More returns, fewer injuries, and kickoffs aren’t “broken” to the point where they dominate the game. But each coach will have their say this offseason, including the 71-year-old Danny Smith, who has been on the job as long as nearly any coach in football.
