Bill Belichick: Touchbacks aren't preventing injuries on kickoffs, so what's the point?

If you ever want to see New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick at his snarky best, bring up a rule change or something that involves the NFL’s Competition Committee, the group of nine men who have final say on a wide range of topics involving team and game operations.

Case in point: Friday. Belichick was asked for his thoughts on how the new kickoff rules, enacted before this season, have played out now that the regular season is nearing its end, and whether the ball coming out to the 25-yard line on a touchback has made the kickoff a more strategic and competitive play.

“We’ll see,” Belichick said. “I mean, we’ll see when all the numbers come in and all of that. Again, I know for us, we look at each situation every week and we’re not in a controlled environment here, so there are some variables even though we really haven’t had any bad conditions, but potentially there are some variables here that other teams don’t have to deal with [because the Patriots play outside in a cold-weather city vs. in a warm-weather city or indoors]. They could override any rule that you put in or anything like that.

“But it’ll be interesting to see what the league-wide numbers are and all of that. I’d say last week was a good example though, of some of the big proponents of ‘we want more touchbacks.’ We saw a pretty big concussed play with a touchback [Denver’s Kayvon Webster vs. the Chiefs]. So part of the touchback is, ‘Well, we think it’s going to be a touchback so everybody’s really not playing at the same speed because we think it’s a touchback, it’s going to be a no-play.’ But then as a coverage team you don’t know for sure the guy isn’t coming out or not so you’re playing at full speed, so some of the concussions and some of the injuries, to me, look like they come on touchbacks.

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“So we want more touchbacks – is that really solving the problem here as it’s been presented by the competition committee? I mean, I think you know how I feel about it. We’ll see how smart some of that has really been, to address the problems that we think are being addressed. I don’t know. It seems like football – we’ve got a pretty good game here. It’s been that way for a long time. It seems like the kicking game has been a great part of our game.

“But I guess we have a lot of people that feel like the game needs to be changed, so I don’t know. We’ll have to see where all of that turns out. I don’t know what all of the numbers are.”

Belichick has long disliked any tinkering with the kickoff – in 2011, when the spot of the kickoff was moved up to the 35-yard line, he expressed his displeasure, saying back then he was opposed to the elimination of the kickoff, calling it “one of the most exciting plays in football” and casting doubt that the changes were being made to reduce head injuries.

In the first game of this season, with another new kickoff change in place, Belichick did use the play strategically – not wanting to just give the Arizona Cardinals the ball at the 25, he had kicker Stephen Gostkowski boot the ball as high as possible and a little short, essentially forcing the returner to return the ball and giving his coverage teammates time to get down the field. It worked: the Patriots pinned the Cardinals’ Andre Ellington at the 17, meaning Arizona had 8 additional yards to gain to get into comfortable range to attempt a game-winning field goal.