Kickoffs? Practically a Field Goal

I hope everyone enjoys this post as it will be popping my Views from the Couch blogging cherry. Here’s the deal though. The NFL is awesome. It’s just absolutely phenomenal. With that being said, I’m not really feeling the rule change of the kick off spot…at all. Then again, who is? Kickoffs are possibly the best single play in football from a lot of standpoints. Football is not a contact sport; it’s a violent sport. Kickoffs used to highlight this, but now are as soft as Hugh Hefner off Viagra. Like honestly, college kicks off are from farther away. I want full speed collisions. I want to see who has the balls to stand there and block someone running full speed. For goodness' sake I want to see someone actually run a damn kick back. They might as well just spot the ball at the 20 yard line and call it a day. Not to mention where else does a bottom of the roster player get an opportunity to smack up a big name prima donna return guy. I want to see Mathew Slater knock the life out of Antonio Cromartie. That’s my shit right there. I mean it was bad enough that the NFL canned the three man wedge rule, but at least I could live with that. I understand safety is a concern, but what injuries are they basing this off of? It would seem that they just based it off of possibility. What major injuries have occurred on kickoffs recently? All I can think of off the top of my head is Kevin Everett, which I will admit was pretty horrid. However, that was kind of freakish from my eyes. I’m sure I’m missing a few but whatever. You get my point. Seriously, what are all those NFL players who just run really fast and suck dong at everything else going to do? Brandon Tate is probably going to be working with Delonte West at the furniture store in a year or two.

Let’s take a quick look at some numbers here. Last year Baltimore led the league in kickoff touchback percentage with a truly astounding 46%. This was about 15% higher than anyone else in the league. Even Sebastian “the drunk Polish brawler” Janikowski couldn’t top that. In fact, ten teams around the league averaged in the single digits. This year however, every team is double digits. The current low is around 11% from the Seahawks (insert a Pete Carroll sucks joke here). Over half the league is over 50% with ten teams over 60 goddamn percent. It’s completely absurd. Sure it’s a small sample size and those numbers will be slightly skewed by bad weather at the end of the year, but that won’t change the numbers that much. NFL, get your shit together.

-@maxmorellz