Writers from around the Tribune Co. discuss the topic of the NFL's decision to have teams kick off from their 35-yard line this season rather than the 30 and to allow players on the coverage team to have a running head start of no more than five yards. Weigh in with a comment of your own.
Sam Farmer, Los Angeles Times
A couple of years ago, Carson Palmer predicted something horrifying: With the ever-increasing size and speed of players, coupled with the ramped-up violence of the game, at some point soon an NFL player would die on the field. Were that to occur, there’s a decent chance it would happen on a kickoff.
Nowhere are collisions more consistently brutal. The league monitors these things to the most minute degree, and there’s no way it would do anything to dampen the most exciting play in football if there wasn’t a real and increasing danger of a terrible outcome.
Call it the wussification of the game if you like, but it was a good move in the name of player safety. It wasn’t an egregious wrenching of the rules, either -- as the suggested moving of touchbacks to the 25 would have been -- because before 1994 kickoffs were at the 35 anyway.
This was just a return to the old system. And, in the name of keeping players a little safer, it was a smart move.
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