The Hall of Fame game, a ceremonial formality that imposes the obligation of a fifth preseason game on two teams, features plenty of reps from guys who, come September, will no longer have any chance at getting back to Canton because they won’t be in the NFL. This year, something far more relevant than the first formal opportunity to jockey for jobs will be happening.
This year, the glorified scrimmage between the Colts and Packers will entail the first opportunity for teams to experiment with the kickoff under circumstances where a touchback will result in the ball being placed not on the 20 but the 25. Plenty of coaches have made it clear that they won’t be booming the ball into the end zone and conceding an extra five percent of the field. Even those who have opted to keep their cards close to the vest can’t help but hint strongly at their intentions.
"[W]e’ve talked about it quite a bit and I don’t want to say what I’m gonna do yet,” Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said on Friday’s PFT Live. “I have a hard time, you know. I guess I’m old school, but they put the ball on the 20 yard line and you jump offside on defense and give them an easy five yards, I’m not gonna be real happy about it. So we’re going try to continue to play as much field position as we can, play good defense, understanding field position, and that might help answer the question.”
There’s another important question that has been largely overlooked during the discussion over teams deliberately kicking the ball short of the end zone. How will the receiving team react?
It’s presumed coaches will instruct their return specialists to field the ball and run with it away from their own goal line and toward the opponent’s. But what if the receiving team decides to let the ball bounce into the end zone before recovering it and taking a touchback?
With the ball live after 10 yards, that approach entails risks -- as the Vikings once learned the hard way, 14 years before Zimmer became the head coach. A weird bounce here and/or an unexpected hop there could mean not that the receiving team will have the ball inside the 25 but that the kicking team will.
The end result likely will be that the receiving team always strives to get its hands on the ball as soon as possible, and to hope for the best. That approach will guarantee more, not fewer, returns. And more occasions on which the “most dangerous play in the game” will occur.
A change to the touchback rule during the 2016 regular season is highly unlikely. If, however, at some point during the 65 games of the preseason it becomes clear that the new touchback rule will have the opposite effect of what’s intended, the league could still pull the plug on the new approach before the evening of September 8, when the Panthers visit the Broncos. Here’s hoping that the NFL will be prepared to convene an emergency meeting by phone of the 32 owners, in order to determine whether at least 24 of them are willing to take advantage of one final chance to reverse a decision that may not do what they think it will do.
