CFL fans are up in arms about potential changes to the league’s kickoff rules, but one of Canadian football’s fiercest advocates believes some tweaks are justified.
B.C. Lions co-general manager Neil McEvoy, who has worked for the team since 1995, told 620 CKRM‘s The Sportscage this week that an effort to reduce the number of kickoffs would be beneficial to player safety.
“The change I’d like to see is just going to the change we already have. When you kick a field goal and make the field goal, you have the opportunity to take the ball or receive the ball. If you apply that to the touchdown, it wouldn’t be that much of a difference,” McEvoy said. “You’ll lose some kickoffs, but the unfortunate reality is even though in the National Football League the kickoff is just a wasted play, that’s where they still have the majority of their injuries.”
TSN‘s Dave Naylor first reported that the CFL was having informal discussions regarding changes to their kickoff rules during the league’s winter meetings earlier this month. Two potential alterations are reportedly on the table: the small-scale change suggested by McEvoy which would allow teams to elect to take the ball at the forty-yard line following a touchdown, just as they currently can for field goals, or a wholesale shift to the kickoff format first used by the XFL, which places players in a line five-yards apart.
Formal debates regarding those proposals will not happen until the CFL’s rules committee meetings in March. However, fans have already expressed concerns about losing the league’s uniquely exciting return game, especially given the seismic shifts that have happened south of the border.
The NFL has been working to all but eliminate the kickoff over the past several seasons, reducing the rate of returns from 95 percent in 2005 to just 31 percent now. That league has gradually whittled away at the importance of special teams, moving up the kickoff spot to encourage touchbacks, eliminating the running start for the kicking team, and allowing any ball fair-caught to be fielded at the 25-yard line.
Those alterations have been driven by injury data, which has found that 14 percent of total concussions in the NFL occurred on kickoffs despite them accounting for just six percent of total plays. Additionally, 30 percent of all ACL tears and 29 percent of all lower-body injuries in the NFL occurred on special teams.
The CFL has not made any injury data available to the public but recently witnessed a substantial injury on special teams in a premier game. Calgary Stampeders’ returner Peyton Logan and Lions’ linebacker Jack Hinsperger collided helmet-to-helmet on a kickoff return in the Western Semi-Final, knocking both unconscious. Logan reportedly suffered a fractured vertebrae, while Hinsperger has dealt with nerve damage.
“If you watched our playoff game last year and that horrific hit on the kickoff, that is the injuries we’re trying to eliminate,” McEvoy illustrated. “If we can eliminate one or two or three, let’s say one kickoff a game, hopefully, you can eliminate some of those injuries because I want the safety of the players and I’d like to have players available to entertain.”
Under the long-time personnel executive’s preferred proposal, teams with electric returners could still elect to receive the ball more frequently. Gameplay would also be unchanged, as would the opportunity for excitement in the final three minutes of the game, when teams have never been allowed to decline a return.
Fans are woe to part with any aspect of their beloved three-down game, this isn’t regarded as a big alteration by a CFL lifer like McEvoy. Ultimately, it will keep players healthier for plenty of other exciting plays in the game.
“Running down on kickoff and then making a play is not as exciting as a linebacker hitting the running back in the hole,” he insisted. “I’m thinking little changes that can eliminate as many injuries as we can will be the better for the game and everything else.”
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