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While player safety is vital and something that the NFL is striving to make a priority of theirs, there is a flip side to that coin of such a big change to one of the three phases of the game. There are a ton of players in the league that rely on their special teams ability to make the 53-man roster, with kick-off and punt teams being the catalyst for those spots. All of a sudden, those players do not mean as much, their role basically slashed. Pat McAfee shared his thoughts on the change, voicing some conerns:
Matt Gay kicked off 77 times last year and 61 of them were touchbacks. This new rule would only apply to those other 16 kicks, which is basically one kickoff a game.
It is hard for me to believe that what happens on one play a game is going to have much effect on the roster. Especially, as JY53 points out, teams can kickoff in such a way that the receiving team can't fair catch it. And then there's the likelihood that teams would want to return the kick at times even if they could fair catch it. Heck, they do it now! Teams run some kicks out of the end zone even though they could get the ball at the 25 - why wouldn't they run one back from the 5?
AlbaNY_Ram
