WHY DOES THE NFL COMPETITION COMMITTEE HATE KICKOFFS?

At their Annual League Meeting the NFL decided on some unpopular rule changes. One change that many people are heated over is the "leading with the helmet rule".

This is one of those rules that is being put into play to make the game safer. While it's not happening next year, there are still murmurs of getting rid of kickoffs. As you may recall there has been two recent changes made to kickoffs.

• ​2011- The ball was kicked from the 35 instead of the 30 resulting in a much greater amount of touchbacks. (80% return rate in 2010 compared to a 54% return rate in 2011, and a 41% return rate in 2015).
• 2016- Touchbacks now resulted in the ball being placed on the 25 yard line instead of the 20.

With the change in 2016, many teams changed their strategy. Instead of kicking the ball through the endzone, they started to put a little more loft on it making the other team more likely to play it. As usual, Bill Belichick and the Patriots have been pretty awesome when it comes to strategizing for field position via kickoffs. Since field position is a huge determinant to scoring and rules frequently appear to be changed on the fly to benefit Patriots' opponents, could their dominance have anything to do with eliminating kickoffs altogether?

While it might just be a coincidence, let's look at who is on the NFL Competition Committee and how they are selected.

Now let's look at where these teams rank when it comes to field position after a kickoff. (Keep in mind there are 32 teams, so anything greater than 16th is in the bottom half). It doesn't take much effort to see that pretty much all of the teams who are represented on the committee aren't very good when it comes to kickoffs as they generally have below average numbers (Team' Rank).

So, how do these teams do when covering kickoffs? They once again are typically below average. Opponent's rank represents the quality of field position after a team kicks off. Since it is a ranking system, low numbers mean that the team did a better job pinning their opponents back than a team with a high number.

While there isn't likely a way to prove shenanigans with the Competition Committee, how bad these teams are with kickoffs and how good the Patriots are should surely raise some eyebrows.