So I saw this proposal for a new rule on CNN. Not sure what to think about it. It appears to give the trailing offense a better chance at keeping the ball than an onside kick, but I’m not sure that’s a great idea. In my opinion, the game already favors the offense anyway. I’d leave things the way they are…
I liked the original onside kick better in theory, but given the injury risks, they had to change it somehow. The neutered onside kick of the last few years was an experiment that hasn’t worked out - it still has risks but with a lower chance of success, making it kind of pointless.
So I think this is the best of some bad options. It looks like the conversion rate for 4-and-15 is around 19%, which seems about right to me. Moving it back to the 25-yard line I think alleviates some of the concern about favoring the offense too much. Before the ball was going to end up around the 45-yard line whether successful or not. Now a successful conversion still leaves decent yards to go, and a failed attempt means a very short field.
My recollection is that, before the recent kickoff rule changes, onside kicks were successfuly coverted at about a 20% rate, so I agree, that’s about the right kind of challenge to re-achieve the previous balance.
I don’t think that one wants to make it any easier to recover/retain possession after a score than the old onside kick did, but I do believe that it needs to be more attainable than it’s now become.
Just to build on this: as the CNN article notes, last season, the onside kick conversion rate was 12.7%. But, it was only at 8% (3 out of 37) before Falcons kicker Younghoe Kooconverted two straight in a week 13 game against the Saints. (He actually converted three straight, but the first one was nullified by a penalty.)
If it ends up being the same % that’s ideal, but even if going for it is a lower % I still prefer 4th and 15 to an onside kick.
You can achieve 4th and 15 entirely on merit. You’d welcome luck to help out, of course, but you can design a good play and have a receiver run a good route and your QB throw a good pass and get the first down all because you planned, practiced and executed.
Contrast that with an onside kick where you’re essentially just praying to the football gods to bless you with a good bounce. Too much luck, too little football.
I’m sympathetic to the purists on this one, but I personally lean towards changing it. Football has to start implementing as much as it can to protect the players, and the kicking game is a great place to start. And as Ellis Dee says, this shifts things away from luck, more towards ability. And as a Chefs fan, I’m currently even more in favor of it. As Andy Reid said - “we’ve got a guy who can do 4th and 15”.
I don’t know who wrote this new rule, but math was not their strong suit.
Agreed, the multiple onside kicks in the Falcons/Saints game mentioned by kenobi 65 are a good example of the risk. In the first attempt (that was incorrectly called back), the receiver is focused on the ball and isn’t prepared for the Falcon player to knock him over. The Falcon player fortunately makes a glancing hit, but could have easily injured the receiver if he’d hit him square.
In the second attempt, the Saints player has a shot at it, but wisely decides to pull up. If he’d been too focused on the ball to see the Falcons player, or if he’d decided to go for it at all costs, that could have put two players out of the game.
“Summary of Philadelphia’s Changes to Playing Rule Proposal No. 3.” That’s Philly, always trying to game the system for an extra yard.
As a Saints fan, I suppose i should say hell yeah, give Drew Brees a shot at 4th and 15 rather than an onside kick…but on the other hand, an onside kick won us our only Super Bowl. Still, I think this is just tilting the game too much towards the offense. I enjoy a game that ends 14-10 more than a shootout that ends 52-49.
This is a perfect example of why this is a horrible idea. It favors teams with high-powered offenses. And Im not too sympathetic to the whole making onside kicks safer. They really arent that dangerous in the first place because players are chasing the ball rather than taking out each other. The changes that helped offenses in the 90s have made the game more arcadey but less compelling imo.
The defense is still on the field for the play. Couldn’t you just as easily say that it favors teams with stifling defenses? I’d rather see the game come down to a battle between an offense and defense instead of special teams. A well-executed play by either the offense or defense is more exciting than a lucky bounce, and I’d argue more what football should be.
If you watch a kick, maybe a couple players are chasing the ball, and the rest are trying to take the opposing team out. I can’t find statistics specifically for onside kick injury rates, but the NFL made the changes based on injuries. If you have stats showing onside kicks are no more dangerous than a play from scrimmage, I’d be interested.
This is just going to give more opportunity for games to turn on a bad penalty call. Questionable interference calls are already a problem and a critical passing situation like that is just begging for them.
That’s a good point. Also true of onside kick penalties, but that doesn’t negate the issue of DPI on 4th and 15. Maybe they would adopt the unwritten hail mary officiating standards where anything short of egregious is chalked up to “let them play.”
Well shoot. Oh well.
a high school team never punts and all their kickoffs are onside. And they have won a bunch of state titles. I think they are in Kentucky.
Arkansas, actually. Yes, they’ve been quite successful for some time, though I think that the coach’s approach is still too unorthodox for wide acceptance.
Just a comment that I hope you might find helpful: I put the first 6 words of your post into Google, and it gave me a link directly to a Bleacher Report article that did a fairly in-depth reporting of the Arkansas team in question. Providing a link, or even the correct state the team was in, might be a more interesting contribution, rather than the stream-of-conscience half-formed thought that your original post is.
Somebody on the internet got a fact wrong?? Must be first time ever. 
[Moderating]
Munch, condescending replies of that sort add nothing to the board. If you genuinely wanted to be helpful, you could have provided a link yourself, especially since you had the Google search open and everything.
From my vantage, the biggest drawback to changing to that type of rule (the one that didn’t pass) is that Team A won’t be able to pull a surprise onside play against Team B.
In a similar fashion, I didn’t like moving back the extra point because if (these days) you surprise switched from a kick to a run-in or pass-in you have to go so much farther.