Inside the New Kickoff Rule with STC Brian Mason

I think it will definitely impact offensive field position positiv here's brown with the return brown one man to beat if you look at the XFL in the XFL the average starting field position was right around the 30 ydd line last year the average starting field position in the NFL was the 25 yd line so already just by doing the XFL model would give the offense five yards better field position on average kicker from the 30 return team lined up at the opposite 30 can't move to the ball he's fielded and here goes Keith mrey and they're going to turn it around the r on the near side and for the first time they get creative and the battle Hawks have the sideline the new NFL hybrid kickoff model was really similar to the XFL model with some tweaks that were made along the way really just looking at it from an alignment standpoint first the kicker is still going to kick off the ball from the 35 yd line just like everybody's used to seeing um in the previous NFL kickoff model what's going to be different is the other 10 kickoff players the front line players will be lined up on the far 40 yard line so everybody will be line up on the far 40 yd line there'll be rules that have them all spaced out so we'll have two players on each side of the ball outside the numbers two players on each side of the ball between the numbers in the hash and then two players in the middle of the field between the hashes that's going to take away some of that running and that leadup running that you're used to seeing in a kickoff and all those guys will be lined up stationary at that 40 yard line kind of all spread out across from them the kickoff return team will be 5 yards away so the kickoff return team will be at the 35 yd line there'll be mandatory seven players players on the line of scrimmage on that 35 yd line and nine players have to be in the setup Zone the setup zone is going to be the 5 yard area after that 35 so the 35 to the 30 there'll be nine players there seven of which will be on their front foot on the 35 yd line so you can then have two floaters that are off the ball outside the hash in that setup area as long as they're between the 35 and the 30 so that'll be kind of the kickoff or turn front line five yards across from the kickoff front line and you can have a maximum of two returners back deep in the landing Zone that kick better go beyond the 20 and it does the landing zone is going to be the 20 ydd line to the goal line and the kickoff return team can have two returners back there to try and field the ball within that Landing Zone every ball they want to hit in the landing Zone and they want as many returns as possible so contrary to kind of how things went last year with the new fair catch rule where there was a limited number of returns we're trying to decrease some of the Run and the high impact increase some of the entertainment value and some of the return that may be the answer that Dallas is looking for takes the kickoff return all the way back for the touchdown 92 Ys if it lands short of the landing Zone that'd be the same thing is kicking it out of bounds so if you kick it out of bounds or if it lands up at the 22 yd line that ball would then be spotted at the 40 yd line every ball that ends up Landing in the landing zone or thereafter has to either be returned or downed by the return turn team any ball that lands straight into the end zone for a Touchback if it were to be down for a Touchback would go to the 30 yd line any ball that were to hit in the landing Zone and then roll into the end zone for a Touchback because it hit in the landing Zone first would then be a Touchback that goes to the 20 yd line to try and incentivize the return team to return all balls that land within the landing Zone everybody on the kickoff and kickoff return team can start once the ball either hits the ground or hits a player within the landing Zone that would kind of be the start of the play those are kind of the basic rules of the alignments where we want to place the ball in the landing Zone it's not exactly the XFL model it's kind of took some tweaks and some different things that are off of that it's really never been practiced never been tested never been done see those two guys come side to side and Fred Brown finds the hole first thing we'll do when we get together as a special teams unit is go through the rules so everybody kind of knows hey here's the new rules with the kickoff um kickoff return model 90 yd kickoff return for a score for the battle hog as we start to get into OTAs kind of be able to work this into some different technique and drill work we won't be able to do a full 11 on 11 until we get into training camp in August so that makes it a little bit more challenging to kind of be able to experiment with everything to see the big picture of things but certainly try to experiment with some different techniques some different ideas of how to handle some different schemes um and things that we might be looking to implement kind of being able to at least have some idea okay here's some things that might work here are some things that did not work as well for some of the guys everybody's going to be studying everybody else what works what doesn't doesn't work for sure this will be something that'll be very interesting to see because there's so many unknowns and how you know everybody kind of adapts off of each other as a season [Music] progresses