I think the touchback on the 25 is new for 2016. The NFL seems to want to discourage kickoff returns, maybe because these plays see a lot of injuries.
Moving back the extra point was done in 2015. The shorter distance was too easy.
The overtime rule change (it used to be paly an extra fifteen minutes) goes back several years, and has been tweaked a bit here and there. A lot of people would like to tweak it again.
What everyone else said, plus one nitpick: The new OT rules weren’t used in the regular season until 2012; they were just used in the playoffs only in 2010 and 2011. The only OT playoff game in that time lasted exactly 11 seconds – the Steelers-Broncos game that Tim Tebow won with an 80-yard TD pass on the first play from scrimmage.
The NFL never played a 15 minute overtime. It was sudden death (with a maximum of 15 minutes) until they changed to the current rule which still has a 15 minute maximum except in playoff games. There were only two tweaks – or the same tweak applied first to playoff games and then to all games as noted here previously.
Thanks. In Canadian football, after a field goal (but not a TD) the receiving team has the choice of getting a kickoff or getting the ball 1st and 10 on their 35. They almost always choose the latter option. It does avoid some kickoffs and I would not object to avoiding them all.
On the other hand all punts must be run back. There is no fair catch and if no one fields it, the punter can come down and claim it. The only protection for the receiver is that no one (except the punter) can be within 5 yards when he fields the punt. I would change that rule.
The NFL hasn’t been able to figure out a consistent philosophy about kickoffs.
They moved the spot of a kickoff from the 35 to the 30 yard line in 1994, as kickers had grown stronger, and more touchbacks were occurring – the thinking was that returns were more exciting than touchbacks.
But, then, as concerns over head injuries grew in recent years (and as kickoff returns are felt to feature some of the most high-speed, high-impact collisions), the league moved the kickoff back to the 35 for the 2011 season, as they wanted to reduce the number of returns.
The change last season (a touchback on a kickoff going to the 25, rather than the 20) was allegedly meant to discourage teams from running kickoffs out of the end zone, since most kick returners aren’t capable of consistently getting the ball that far downfield if they start in the end zone (and, thus, teams would be more likely to instruct returners to down the ball).
But, it may have had the unintended consequence of encouraging teams to employ the “mortar kick” (a higher, shorter kickoff, which is intended to land somewhere inside the 10 yard line, but not in the end zone), which, of course, could lead to more returns, not fewer.
There have been voices in recent years suggesting that the NFL do away with the kickoff entirely (similar to the CFL rule you note), but there’s resistance to that idea, I think in part due to not wanting to entirely remove an exciting play from the game entirely, as well as not wanting to change the thought that an onside kick could be employed at any time.