There isn’t any English noun that adequately conveys what thousands and thousands of followers expertise on the eve of the professional soccer season. Only one thing like the traditional Greek idea of ataraxia — which accurately means the absence of disturbance or bother however connotes a form of chic contentedness — begins to method our beautiful feeling of detachment from all worldly cares. The N.F.L. makes ataraxia out there to every one in all us three days every week, which ought to quantity excessive among the many in any other case doubtful achievements of late modernity.
This yr, alas, my sense of tranquillity is being threatened by the N.F.L.’s choice to vary the foundations governing kickoffs. For the 2023 season, which begins on Thursday, any participant on the receiving group will probably be allowed to sign for a “fair catch” from anyplace between the purpose line and his 25-yard line, quite than having to subject the ball and face the wrath of the 11 gamers on the opposite group converging on him like a phalanx of hoplites. After a good catch, the ball will probably be positioned on the 25-yard line (simply as it might after a standard “touchback” ultimately zone).
If, poor creature, you don’t comply with soccer, the essential level is that the league is creating an incentive to not return the ball on kickoffs — the kind of play reported to have a better danger of concussions. This new rule, adopted within the identify of participant security, is the most recent and most drastic in a collection of modifications that the N.F.L. has made to the kickoff lately, in what appears to be a prelude to eliminating it altogether.
It’s a horrible thought. In addition to being broadly unpopular with followers, gamers and coaches, the brand new rule is questionable in its efficacy, soulless in its company logic and a menace to the ethos of blue-collar toughness that when outlined this nice recreation. I worry the wrath of the soccer gods.
Like Gaul, soccer is split into three elements: offense, protection and particular groups. The kickoff belongs to the final of those phases, and in some ways it’s the side of soccer that has modified the least because the recreation’s invention. Offenses have developed prior to now half century from lumbering floor operations that rewarded uncooked collective effort (“three yards and a cloud of dust”) to high-flying passing assaults that favor an elite handful of “skill” gamers. Defenses have achieved their greatest to adapt with a consistently altering set of subtle methods. But kickoffs have largely remained the identical, a protect of old school hustle, an area wherein effort can matter greater than God-given potential.
Apart from kick-return specialists — speedsters equivalent to Ray-Ray McCloud of the San Francisco 49ers — particular groups gamers are usually drawn from the second and third strings of lively rosters, unheralded gamers simply hoping to make the squad. They are typically males like Grant Stuard, a linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts and the final participant chosen within the 2021 N.F.L. draft. (This is presumably one motive the brand new fair-catch possibility was all however ignored throughout this yr’s preseason exhibition video games: Players seeking to survive last roster cuts enthusiastically returned kicks within the hope of impressing their coaches with an enormous runback.)
A handful of gamers, equivalent to Matthew Slater of the New England Patriots, have raised particular groups play to a form of artwork type. Slater, a once-obscure fifth-round draft pick of U.C.L.A. who has by no means been a full-time participant on offense or protection, repeatedly downs kicks deep in opponents’ territory, routinely makes tough open-field tackles and has been chosen to the Pro Bowl 10 occasions. That’s the form of underdog story soccer nonetheless wants.
But kickoffs will not be nearly unsung work ethic. They have additionally produced lots of the N.F.L.’s most fun moments: the so-called Music City Miracle in 2000; Desmond Howard’s 99-yard landing return in Super Bowl XXXI, which helped earn him the distinction of the sport’s most useful participant; Gale Sayers, seemingly each time he touched the ball.
Getting rid of kickoffs additionally means sacrificing a few of the science of the sport. Special groups have lengthy been a key element of technique, particularly for the sport’s biggest coaches, equivalent to Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots (who has been identified to offer impromptu lectures on the topic to bewildered journalists). The 2010 San Diego Chargers had arguably the very best offense and the very best protection within the league and a roster stuffed with present and future Hall of Famers — and so they failed even to make the playoffs due to their traditionally dangerous particular groups play.
All of those issues, you would possibly protest, pale earlier than the purpose of constructing gamers safer. But it’s not apparent that the brand new fair-catch rule can have this desired impact. There isn’t any good proof that earlier modifications to the kickoff have helped as a lot as anticipated. According to information collected and analyzed by Sports Illustrated, concussions throughout kickoffs practically doubled from 2020 to 2022, which may very well be a sign that earlier rule modifications are having unintended penalties that enhance danger — extra squib kicks, maybe, or extra floating punt-like kicks, each of which could lead to extra collisions.
There is a deeper level right here concerning the questionable knowledge of sudden, top-down change. Football just isn’t a rationalist enterprise whose guidelines might be adjusted on a whim in line with the tinkering logic of enterprise consultants and risk-averse company legal professionals. It is an primarily violent recreation with a specific historical past and with gamers and coaches and a fan base of thousands and thousands who care about its continuity with its previous. Evolution can happen, however organically.
Many gamers and coaches formally opposed the brand new kickoff rule when it was proposed, however like many employees earlier than them, they’ve discovered themselves helpless within the face of H.R. Some coaches have continued to voice their opposition, together with Belichick, John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens (who has prompt that the rule change could lead to extra accidents) and Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs (who has warned that if the league continues to eradicate elementary features of the sport, N.F.L. groups will discover themselves “playing flag football”).
During a current preseason broadcast, the previous Arizona Cardinals fullback Ron Wolfley referred to as the rule change an “abomination,” sounding a suitably apocalyptic word, and prompt that soccer by definition can’t be secure.
I for one agree with him. I hope that the N.F.L. chooses to rethink and reverse its choice on the finish of the season (because it has generally achieved with different rule modifications). Football, with its stylized warfare between city-states, its ritualized celebration of morally ambivalent heroes, its trophies and its encouragement of a quasi-pagan fatalism within the face of defeat, is among the many solely vestiges of our classical inheritance.
Homer captured the spirit of the N.F.L. when he dismissed mortality as beneath the priority of the great-souled: “Even as are the generations of leaves, such are those also of men. As for the leaves, the wind scattereth some upon the earth.”
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