Get ready for Rams Wild and Whacky NFL rules changes to kickoffs.

The LA Rams may not have boasted one of the best special teams units in the NFL in 2023, but that could change dramatically for the 2024 NFL season. Not only did the team draft one of the best kickers in the last 10 years in Stanford kicker Joshua Karty, but the NFL changed everything about the kickoff play. Well, not JUST the kickoff play, as each new NFL season is subject to a new set of regulations and rules as NFL Insider Ian Rapoport generously shared weeks ago.:

There are 12 new rule changes to digest from this informational update, and as is typically the case, there are plenty of new rules regarding reviewable plays, as well as the drama and controversy over new rules.

The new rule that we want to focus upon is rule 10A, a rule with states:

"Rule 10A: By competition committee, for one year only, amends Rule 6 to create a new form of a free kick play that is designed to: (1) resemble a typical scrimmage play by aligning players of both teams closer together and restricting movement to reduce space and speed, and; (2) promote more returns. Permits the Replay Official automatically review whether a free kick legally touched the ground or a receiving team player in the landing zone."

Per NFL Rules and Bylaws

Okay, that is a lot of information to unpack initially, but it does not have enough detail to give us a true menu of what that entails. To get a more complete picture of how this new kickoff rule will take place, I now turn to the operations.NFL.com website itself. The details included in the description of the new rule are quite voluminous and can be better suited to cure insomnia than to inform fans. So I've taken the additional step of distilling down all of the rules into bite-sized chunks of what has and will change under this new one-year-only experiment.