The Point Of No Return

I don’t know what is more ridiculous.

The NFL’s decision to move the spot where the kickoff is made forward five yards, which nearly guarantees that a kickoff will go DEEP into the end zone, or out of the end zone, putting the ball automatically on the 20 yard line every time.

Or, the decision by kick returners who receive the kickoff nine yards deep into the end zone, and think that running that kickoff out is a smart decision.

You catch the ball nine yards deep in the end zone and drop to your knee, you’ve got your team automatic field position on the 20 yard line, with NOTHING that can go wrong. Usually, your teammates see the ball kicked that deep and they relax and kind of quit on the play, figuring the kick returner is going to down it in the end zone, and the result is that there is not very much blocking that is going to be happening.

A guy that decides to run the ball out has to go 29 yards worth of kick return JUST to get it to the 20. On his way there, the defenders usually appear in their lanes and ready to make the tackle somewhere around the 10 yard line, and usually (when the guy runs it out from goal line minus nine) the end result is something substantially shorter than the 20 yard line. I don’t get the thinking. You are guaranteed the 20 yard line. You have 15 yards to run JUST to get to the FIVE yard line. Another 10 yards, 25 yards of return yardage in total, and you STILL have only reached the 16.

It’s like someone in Blackjack hitting on 19. When you are that deep in the end zone, you can drop to your knees and automatically get the ball on the 20. You’ve already got a playable hand. Chances are way higher that you will bust than that you will hit a winning hand (get the ball out significantly further than the 20).

When you run it out from deep in the end zone, and you are on the road, and you get tackled short of the 20, you have just given the home team a major jolt of electricity in terms of momentum. Crowds react as if you have just sacked the quarterback, or blocked a kick. It is instant bad field position that the kick returner just got his team into. The crowd going more and more wild usually results in a bad possession for the visiting team’s offense.

This is not even considering the fact that the guy unexpectedly running the kickoff from deep in the end zone often does it in a way that throws off the timing of his kick return blockers so much so that they are more apt to get things like holding or illegal blocks in the back penalties, that push the offensive drive back even deeper into their own territory.  You increase the chances that one of your teammates will get injured on flawed kick returns also.

I don’t know the statistics, but I would bet good money that there are more drives that start inside of your own 20 that end up going nowhere than drives that begin exactly at the 20 after a touchback. Besides the extra yards to go, there is also the pumped up defense and the pumped up crowd (when you are on the road) to deal with. If you go three plays and have to punt, you end up giving your opponent the ball in good field position (for them). It is almost like you have just turned the ball over.

Have I mentioned fumbling yet? The kick returner coming out of the end zone is usually trying to do something to justify his decision to run the ball out. He then has to get up to top speed very early in the return JUST to get some of that minus nine yards worth of yardage made up, and with a defensive wave of players running top speed the other direction, there is often a very violent collision that sometimes results in the return guy coughing up the ball.

The risk of coming out of deep in the end zone vs. staying in and taking a touchback is simply not worth it. The truth is, you are more likely to get hit and fumble than you are to run back a kick all the way. You often put your team in bad field position. You often get the defensive team all riled up. If you are on the road, you often see the play (of tackling the returner short of the 20) cause the crowd to help turn such plays into momentum for the home team. You do more harm than good.

There is an old football saying that still rings true. It is not how many great plays you make that usually decides who’s going to win. It’s how FEW lousy plays you make. When a kick returner decides to come out from deep in the end zone and ends up being tackled far short of the guaranteed 20 yard line they’d automatically get by taking a touchback, they have made a lousy play. How this negative play is continually allowed to happen by coaching staffs throughout football is a complete mystery to me.