Football is a great spectator sport, whether in person, at a bar, or sitting at home. It’s also fun to bet on. There is a relatively big game this weekend with many people expected to watch and wager. We are having a small party at our house and will have the requisite supply of sheets for people to bet on Super Bowl Props (propositions). I keep it pretty simple – first touchdown, first commercial after half-time, etc.
Random trivia: Since the 1950s, one job classification tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics has been rendered obsolete by technology. What is it?
As great as football is, it could be better. For one thing, there could be fewer concussions, which the guardians of the game appear to be working on. But it is a violent game and injuries are inevitable.
My radical proposal is not designed to address that issue, though it would have a bit of an impact. My proposal is to eliminate kicking. Entirely. No more kicks. Now the details of my 14-word (15 depending on how your treat hyphens), 4-point plan.
- Punting is ok. We can’t require a team to go for it on fourth and 20 from its own ten-yard line. It wouldn’t be fair. So for the sake of sticking with my “no more kicks” theme, I declare that a punt is a punt, not a kick.
- No more kickoffs. This will have a modest impact on concussions. Kick returns are among the plays that are most likely to result in injury because the players are going in opposite directions at full speed and some of the collisions are vicious. Even now, many kickoffs aren’t returned. At a minimum, 35% of kicks were not returned in 2017 because that is the lowest touchback percentage for a team. At the other extreme, 85% of Carolina’s kickoffs were not returned.
The 1000 or so kicks that were returned yielded only seven touchdowns. I’m suggesting that we wouldn’t miss much if we got rid of kickoffs. Just give the appropriate team the ball at the 25-yard line to start each half and after each score.
The one exception would be onside kicks late in a game, when the team behind needs to get the ball back. In those situations, teams recover approximately 20% of the time. Surprise onside kicks are recovered over 50% of the time, but there aren’t very many surprises. http://archive.advancedfootballanalytics.com/2009/09/onside-kicks.html
The NFL has already legislated away one surprise tactic – going for two. Extra-points used to be initiated from the two yard line, meaning that teams occasionally attempted a surprise play to garner two points. Now extra-points are initiated from the 15-yard line. Nobody attempts to score two points from there. The lack of surprise onside kicks would have about as much impact on a season (and my enjoyment) as the lack of surprise two-point attempts.
- No more extra-point kicks. Repeat after me: this is the most boring play in sports. In 2010, NFL kickers made 1203 out of 1214 extra-point kicks, that’s 99.1%. After a rule change, extra-point kicks are now from 13 yards farther back. In 2017, NFL kickers made 1066 out of 1134 extra-point kicks, 94%. Slightly more suspenseful, but still boring. What a collective waste of time for the players, the fans at the field, and the fans at home.
Here’s one way to handle it moving forward. Consider all touchdowns to be worth seven points. If a team chooses to “go for two,” they can. If they make it, the touchdown would be worth eight points; if they miss it, the touchdown would be worth six points. That would truly be taking points off the board. I estimate there would be as much furor over eliminating the extra-point kick as there was when Major League Baseball started allowing automatic intentional walks.[1]
- No more field goals. This would definitively change the game (in my opinion) for the better. First, let’s restate the obvious: kicks are boring, whether they are for extra points or for field goals. The snap is almost always good, the hold is almost always good, the kick is almost always good. Modern NFL kickers are absurdly good.[2] That makes them extra boring.
Field Goals in 2017
| Yards | Attempted | Made | Percent |
| 0-19 | 9 | 9 | 100% |
| 20-29 | 243 | 238 | 97.9% |
| 30-39 | 301 | 258 | 85.7% |
| 40-49 | 320 | 254 | 79.7% |
| 50-59 | 154 | 107 | 69.7% |
Even beyond 50 yards, NFL kickers are 70% accurate. That causes a problem: coaches are relying too much on their kickers for points. With kickers this good, a scoring drive might only require one or two first downs. It’s too easy. Coaches are too prone to take the points instead of going for the first down.
If this “plan” is ever implemented, touchdown scoring will go way up as coaches forcibly become more creative. Instead of handing off to the fullback on third and 12 from the 35-yard line (and settling for a 40-something yard field goal), the coach will have to try to gain 12 yards on two plays. That seems much more interesting to me than kicking another dull-as-dishwater field goal.
There are no more elevator operators. Did anybody guess that?
I haven’t even mentioned the side benefits: freeing up a roster slot and a bit of money for a non-kicker, freeing practice time for real football plays and players, and avoiding all the photos of kickers celebrating game-winning field goals or depressed about misses. The list likely goes on and on. And what’s the downside of eliminating kicks? Well, there would be an unseemly rise in the unemployment rate for kickers.
[1] The only people I can imagine complaining are kickers and their immediate families. Because they are not a protected group, I am not concerned about legal complications.
[2] Has a job ever been eliminated because the people performing it were especially good?
I’d watch at least as much football under “Bob’s Rules”. But a question… the premise is that kicks are boring, and they are boring in large part because they are almost always good. True for the professionals, but less true for college, and even less so for high school. Would the no-kick rule apply to all levels?
And do we still call the game football if we eliminate the part where the foot makes contact with the ball? What would be a good alternative name? ‘Tackle ball’ sounds lame, but can’t come up with a better one.
At low levels of football, few kicks are attempted because the results are so poor. Not until college do teams routinely attempt kicks beyond say 25 yards. In youth football there are no kickoffs. So — yes, if you indulge me, I would apply the rule to all levels.
I like the renaming concept. I suggest soccer. The rest of the world already uses “football” to refer to the sport we call soccer. I think renaming football (to soccer) is probably the best way to make soccer interesting.
I like the idea, and agree kicks are boring, until they aren’t with a deflection.
If coaches rely often on kicking to score points, doesn’t that imply there are less of the more dangerous plays in use now? Why risk injury to an important player when a kick still nudges the points ahead.
Kicks are boring but I’m not sure they are inherently safer than general plays. There’s a lot of contact on the line and guys are jumping all over the place trying to block the kick.
Ha! Your elevator operator answer came before the footnote asking what job was lost to technology.
I could live without kickoffs, FGs, and PATs. I suspect it would have a negative effect on the Patriots though. For the last 22 years, the Patriots have had better than average FG kickers, so getting rid of them would make other teams a bit closer to the Patriots.
The Patriots also pride themselves on having really good special teams. Removing all special team plays except punts and punt returns would again allow all the other teams to creep closer to the Patriots.
Thanks for trivia comment — I moved the question to the top.
Remember, the Patriots won’t always have superior special teams. Think big picture, if not big history.