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.

What does the new kickoff rule mean?

Okay, let's break down what the new kickoff rule means. If you recall, the kickoff is the play that is designed to start the game, start the second half, or after the offense of one team scores points. The play is designed to be a competitive means of one team sending the football to the other team. So what are the major changes?

• Kicks that land between the 20 and end zone must be returned
• Kicks that bounce from the landing zone into the end zone will be a touchback at the 20-yard line
• Kicks that fail to reach the 20 will result in a touchback at the 40-yard line
• Kicks that land in the end zone will result in a touchback at the 30-yard line
• The opposing team will get the ball at the 40 if the kickoff goes out of bounds
• Onside kicks are reserved for the 4th quarter and must be declared
• There are no fair catches

The most glaring new rule change is the elimination of the fair catch. In essence, players will no longer be permitted to be stationary, wave their hand in the air, and be immune to contact as they make the catch. Fair catches, designed to promote safety for the return specialist, have become the norm and turned kickoffs into a ho-hum form of predictable exchange that eliminates the excitement for fans.

Perhaps a better way of conveying what this new rule means can be found in the visual supplied by NFL Football Operations. In the embedded 90-second video, there NFL highlights the major changes that all teams face with the new kickoff rule.

While the changes themselves may take some time to digest, there are clearly changes in store for NFL fans this year. Of course, that is the intention after all, right? But as is often the case, there are the intended changes, and there are the unintended changes. Let's first explore the intended changes:

What will the new rule mean for the Rams, and the NFL, in 2024?

The thing about a completely new NFL rule is that the copycat aspects of NFL teams that attempt to emulate what works well is neutralized by the absence of any real-world examples of success. That creates the environment in which 32 NFL Special Team Coordinators are individually tasked with developing a successful strategy to give their team an advantage. For the LA Rams, and ST Coordinator Chase Blackburn, that can mean something very different and unique compared to tactics taken by 31 other teams.

And that is itself creating a lot of buzz in the NFL, and among NFL insiders and analysts. It seems like the popular Broadway show, Anything Goes:

The new rules are designed to amplify the opportunities of returning kickoffs. The kickoff team will no longer line up parallel to the kicking tee. Ten of the kicking team's players will line up just five to ten yards away from the receiving team's players. The elimination of fair catches will force the receiving team to emphasize sure-handed players to return kickoffs. Failure to handle the football cleanly in the new environment is disastrous to the receiving team.

There is clearly more pressure on the return specialist in this new kickoff scenario. And I would not be surprised if early jitters in Week 1 becomes the deciding factor as teams attempt to get their arms around what this new set of kickoff rules means on the football field.

Of course, the opposite is true. If the kickoff team can ensure a high arc for kickoffs, and fast gunners who can disrupt the play, kicking teams appear to get a significant advantage under the new rules in terms of improving the likelihood of a turnover. But do return teams get any advantages in the new rules?

Does the kickoff team truly have the advantage?

The very design of the new formation, placing the number of bodies in such close proximity, gives blocking assignments for receiving teams new life. In the past, the best a return team could do is emphasize running to the right, left, or up the middie for a return play. But with blockers just five yards from their assignments, the return team can be far more specific, and could treat the play in much the same version as a jet sweep or other running play that requires time to develop.

The NFL redesigned kickoffs to give teams a greater opportunity to return the kickoff. Just check out the latest estimates by one NFL team, the New York Jets, as to their expectation of how the new rule will impact the game:

Per these projections, NFL teams can expect to triple their number of kickoff returns in 2024, as well as face three times the number of returns by their kicking team. In 2024, the LA Rams returned just nine kickoffs, with an average of just 16.1 yards per return. If these current projections hold for 2024, the Rams are likely to return 30+ kickoffs in 2024.

So the main question for Rams fans is who will return so many kickoffs, and will that be a good thing for the team? While we ponder that question, what about the number of kickoff returns that the Rams faced in 2023? Per Lineups.com, the Rams kickoff team faced 11 returns for 296 total yards. That works out to 17.4 kickoff return yards per game. What happens if that number is tripled? 33 returns for nearly 900 yards is a huge spike of production that will put the young defense on their heels frequently this season.

There is a great deal of pressure on the Rams kickoff teams to improve dramatically this year. But that is simply the obvious impacts. What of the unexpected outcomes of these new kickoff rules?

Here are some of the NFL's unintended changes of the new Kickoff rule

One of the new angles of the changes to the kickoff rule is the new emphasis on tackling, and how the new rules place the kicker into a far more active role in making tackles and shedding blockers on plays. For the Rams, that is a particularly difficult twist, as the team has dedicated punter Ethan Evans to take on all kickoff duties from the kicking tee.

Are the Rams comfortable in placing Evans into a more active role at tackling, and more at risk of injury as a result? That question is being answered by the Kansas City Chiefs, and the answer may surprise you:

If that tactic is successful, will the LA Rams and other teams adopt a new specialist for special teams: A kickoff defender who can also play on the defense in a pinch? Or in the case of the Chiefs, a known and solid defensive veteran player who can learn to kickoff?

I'm quite certain that nobody had that possibility on their bingo card for the 2024 NFL season.

I haven't rushed to address this new wrinkle in the NFL because, while so little is truly known about it, the potential overall impact could become quite significant. And I wanted to allow enough time for the dust to settle to present more than just restating the phrasing of the rule change. I wanted to explore how this rule may change the game, and the experience for fans.

The LA Rams have opted to use punter Ethan Evans in kickoffs through 2023, and I do not anticipate changing that fact for 2024. Evans is a pretty big guy, standing 6-foot-3 and weighing 231 pounds, and naturally has the appearance of a football player who can tackle. While the new rules may alter Evans' emphasis on kicking a higher arcing football, I do not see drastic changes for the Rams in terms of a new kicker.

But the team team will need to rework both the return role and the coverage unit this season. The Rams have a chance to drastically improve the performance of a critical aspect of the game, and I expect that the team will take advantage of the opportunity.

Stay tuned, because I admit that we are just scratching the surface of this topic.

And as always, thank you for reading.