Michael David Smith ,
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Kickoff returns are way up in the NFL this year, and with that increase in returns is the promise of more excitement on a play that had become dull when touchbacks reigned supreme. But the most exciting thing that can happen on a kickoff hasn’t been happening much this season.
Patriots returner Antonio Gibson took a kickoff 90 yards for a touchdown in Week Two against the Dolphins. That’s still the only kickoff return touchdown in the NFL this season.
That’s odd, to say the least. So far this season there have been a total of 764 kickoff returns. For only one of them to go for a touchdown is easily the lowest rate in NFL history. Last year, the first season of the so-called “dynamic” kickoff, where were 920 kickoff returns over the course of the season, and seven of them went for touchdowns.
In 2023, the year kickoffs became so dull that the NFL felt the need to adopt the “dynamic” rule, there were only 587 kickoff returns, nearly 200 fewer than the NFL has already had through six weeks this year. But four of those returns went for touchdowns in 2023.
The paucity of touchdown returns may prove only to be a statistical oddity and not a long-term trend, but for all the talk of how “dynamic” the new kickoff was supposed to be, it hasn’t resulted in the most dynamic of all results on a kickoff, a returner taking it all the way to the house.
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