University Daily Kansan Associate Sports Editor Ethan Padway and Opinion Editor Dylan Lysen discuss whether or not football should abolish kickoffs.

Ethan Padway: I’m Ethan Padway and I’m the current associate sports editor and a former high school quarterback.

Dylan Lysen: I’m Dylan Lysen and I’m the opinion editor at the University Daily Kansan.

EP: The issue is kickoffs in football. I like what college did where they made it more of an incentive to take the touchback by giving you to the 25. I can’t see the NFL doing that right away or for a while until a big lawsuit comes out. They make a big deal about concussions, but concussions happen on every play. Every time a receiver goes over the middle he’s getting hit. So you can try and prevent it as much as you want on kickoffs but at the end of the day they’re happening all around. You’ve got to focus on other areas before you focus on just special teams. 

DL: I guess the issue with kickoffs is instead of having one guy tackle you there’s 11 guys going after you. I’m a Bears fan and for like four years the only offense was Devin Hester getting kickoff and punt returns for touchdowns. I understand if they take it out just to make it safer for someone like Devin Hester and starting from the 20 straight up, it makes sense to me.

EP: But if you do that how are you going to implement onside kicks? There’s so many issues. The kickoff is such an intricate part of the game. You lose all of that. You can’t just say ‘Oh we’re going to do an onside kick because how do you do a fake onside kick then? If you look at the beginning of the second half of the Colts-Saints Super Bowl, the Saints kicked an onside kick and it caught everybody by surprise. They kept Peyton Manning off the field and that really changed the aspect of that game. If you eliminate kickoffs in general and just make it ‘Oh, you start from the 20’ you lose that element of surprise. You lose that part of strategy and that tactic to try and get the ball back right away.

DL: It would pretty much change the game completely. I don’t think it could possibly happen without overhauling the whole sport.


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