Doc Walker was a tight end and saw a lot of duty on kickoffs during his career, and like BMitch, he has that old-school mentality – so like Brian, Doc is liking the NFL’s changes to kickoff rules that were ratified at the NFL Annual Meetings this week.
But Chris Russell, on the other hand, thinks that the NFL is smarter than you think, and ‘player safety’ isn’t the only issue at hand.
“I’ve been talking to special teams coordinators around the league that I know, and they are all in favor of this because of the duality of the change in that it does reduce injury, and that downhill car-crash collision, but also because it encourages more kickoff returns,” Rooster said in teeing Doc up. “But, the NFL is not as innocent and wholesome as people like to think – I think they were really bothered by the fact that nobody cared about kickoffs anymore, because it was boring. Am I crazy for thinking that they care more about excitement and keeping people's eyeballs on whatever game they're watching, as opposed to just improving player health and safety?”
“They've got to do both, but you can't argue the fact that the most violent part of the game is a kickoff, and so they've addressed it – and they're not too big in their britches to take advice from the XFL, which has proven that it's a good product, so learn from it and let's move forward,” Doc replied. “I think these are good moves.”
So who will get some shine for the Commanders now?
“They brought back Jamison Crowder, and they have that kid from UCLA (Kazmeir Allen) under a reserve futures contract, so I wonder if they were going to put more of an emphasis on this. I would think you would have to, right?” Chris said. “Teams have de-emphasized the kick return position for years now, not investing a lot of resources or personnel, but now you almost have to. If I'm understanding the new rules right, kickoffs are gonna be returned almost 100 percent of the time; unless it's an absolute mistake, who would want to give opponents possession at the 35-yard-line? So right now, the kickoff returner is listed as Chris Rodriguez Jr., so they've got to invest in this.”
“You’re pre-draft, and the second day of the draft, you can fill those slots easily – and we don't even have a full team yet,” Doc said. “It’s gonna be a guy who's a returner, because you gotta have a guy who knows what the hell he's doing. You're not gonna get lucky enough to get to a B-Mitch, but you have to have a dedicated guy that can return punts and kicks.”