President-elect Donald Trump has voiced his disapproval of the NFL’s new changes to the kickoff rule, reiterating his previous calls for the league to reverse course.
Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday to voice his concerns. “The NFL should get rid of the ridiculous new Kickoff Rule!” he wrote.
The new “dynamic kickoff” rule, intended to encourage teams to return more kickoffs, sees players from the kicking team now line up on the opposition’s 40-yard line, rather than behind the kicker. Putting the teams closer together is intended to minimize full-speed collisions.
The rule features a “landing zone” for every kickoff, marked from the receiving team’s goal line to the 20-yard line. Two returners are positioned within the Landing Zone and they are the only people, aside from the kicker, who can move prior to the ball landing.
Donald Trump at an NFL game in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 20, 2024. President-elect Trump has voiced his disapproval of the NFL’s new changes to the kickoff rule, reiterating his previous calls for the league to… Donald Trump at an NFL game in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, October 20, 2024. President-elect Trump has voiced his disapproval of the NFL’s new changes to the kickoff rule, reiterating his previous calls for the league to reverse course.
Evan Vucci/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The rule change has been controversial among some fans, including the future president. The changes have come under criticism for no longer allowing for surprise onside-kick attempts and penalties on scoring plays being assessed on the point-after try.
It is not the first time the president-elect has complained about the rule change. In October, he wrote on Truth Social: “I hated seeing what the NFL did with the kickoff return. Saw it tonight at the Steelers/Jets game. When you have something that works, don’t ‘tinker’ with it, you may end up with nothing!”
In September, he wrote that the rule change was “the beginning of the end” for the NFL.
“I can’t believe the NFL is effectively getting rid of the always exciting Kick Off Return,” Trump wrote. “Such an exciting part of Football. What are they doing? BEGINNING OF THE END!”
Since the rule was introduced, the NFL has seen a slight increase in the number of kickoffs returned. Data from the first four weeks of the season showed 29.1 percent of kickoffs were returned (187 of 642 kickoffs), up from all of last season’s 21.7 percent (587 of 2,698 kickoffs).
Speaking to OutKick in September, Trump said he thought the old rules were better. “I don’t know what they’re doing with the kickoff return in the NFL. And I don’t want to get involved in controversy, of course, but it looks so bad. And I noticed that they hadn’t done that in college, and they shouldn’t do it,” he said. “And I think the NFL should go back. And maybe it is a little bit more dangerous, but I doubt that it’s any more dangerous. It’s football.”
“I think they made a terrible mistake in doing that.”
Trump has a long history of lashing out at the league. He slammed some of its players for kneeling during the national anthem as part of the Black Lives Matter protests. He also spearheaded a failed 1986 antitrust lawsuit against the NFL as a team owner in the long-defunct rival United States Football League.
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