The great mystery of the NFL's 105th season is just what the heck a kickoff is going to look like. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers spent some time examining that conundrum on Tuesday evening, during the only night practice of their 2024 training camp.
For at least one year – the new rules will have to be approved again next offseason to make them permanent – the NFL is completely revamping the kickoff in an effort to make it a relevant play again without bringing back the inherent injury risk. There are a lot of details to the new process, but the most important change is that most of the players on both sides will be lined up across from each other, about five yards apart in the middle of the receiving team's end of the field. There will no longer be long sprints down the field by cover men or designed combo blocks by the return team. It has been described by many coaches as being akin to a play from scrimmage.
"It is a defensive play, just like it's kind of an offensive play," said Head Coach Todd Bowles. "It's going to be interesting, because if one defensive guy misses a hole that guys out of there. And obviously if the offense misses their blocks he's going to get killed back there. So you want to see what kind of schemes people come up with in the preseason and we'll make the determinations after that."
Around the NFL, there is a general sense that the teams that crack the code are going to have a big edge, at least early in the season before enough game tape circulates, over those that do not. If a team thinks it has a good kickoff play in practice, will it give it a shot during preseason games or try to hide it. According to Bowles, it's impossible to know if you really do have a good play unless you run it out there in a game situation, suggesting that the preseason games are going to be a major proving ground.
"We don't know what we have until we run it, and we're not even tackling here," said the coach. "So we have to run some things in preseason just to see what we have. We may not have one, we may have one. So it will tell a lot."
The Bucs may have one. One rep saw rookie running back Bucky Irving, a prime candidate to serve as one of the kickoff return men this year, broke free into the open field. For obvious reasons, the design of the play will remain unreported.
"He's one of the guys playing back there, so we'll keep going," said Bowles. "He's a very good one-cut runner. We'll just ask him to do what he did in college, and he did that tonight."
