Placekickers may no longer be NFL kickoff specialists

It appears that safety Justin Reid will be the Kansas City Chiefs’ primary kickoff specialist in 2024.

According to Kansas City Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub, who is considered one of the best coaches at his position in the NFL and has received interviews for head coaching openings in the past, the NFL’s new kickoff rules may have an unintended consequence: Not having a kicker on the field at all. Toub recently stated that the NFL’s new “XFL-style” kickoff approach puts the kickoff specialist in a position to make more tackles. Per Toub, he estimated that kickers were “involved” in 25 to 40 percent of the XFL’s kickoff returns.

He also mentioned that the Chiefs would use their place kicker, Harrison Butker, in “certain situations,” like the team having a late lead in the game — when the team will simply elect to kick the ball out of the end zone and take a five-yard penalty to give the opposing offense the ball at the 30-yard line instead of allowing them to get a kickoff return attempt.

Last season, only 10 non-specialists kicked the ball on NFL kickoffs. Six came from the Houston Texans’ Dare Ogunbowale, who was an in-game injury replacement kickoff specialist for the second half of the Texans’ Week 9 game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The Chiefs are apparently thinking of allowing starting safety Justin Reid, who recorded seven kickoffs and two extra point attempts for the team in the 2022 season, to be their primary kickoff specialist. So to say that this year’s NFL rule changes are going to bring a fresh look to the kickoff would, at this point, be an understatement.

So far, there has been no indication from the Green Bay Packers’ special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia that the team will be using a non-kicker as a kickoff specialist. Under Bisaccia, it’s been the placekicker, not a punter or a positional player, who has been their kickoff guy. Currently, there’s a three-way battle for the starting kicker job in Packers camp, with incumbent starter Anders Carlson, free agent signing Greg Joseph and reserve/futures player Jack Podlesny fighting for a single roster spot. We’ll have to see, though, if some defender ends up flashing a leg in camp that makes Bisaccia move in a different direction on kickoff team.