Last week, the NFL announced that it had made a major rule change to its kickoffs, now allowing players to call fair catch and be granted an automatic touchback with the offense taking the ball at the 25-yard line. The rule change was made in the name of player safety, but it doesn’t sound like many involved are big fans of the change.
This week, Cleveland Browns special teams coordinator Bubba Ventrone claimed that every special teams coordinator and player was against the rule change.
“All the coordinators were against it, the players are against it, but supposedly there’s data,” Ventrone said according to Cleveland.com.
Ventrone argued against the NFL’s assertion that concussions happen with more frequency on kickoffs.
“We see a cut-up of the concussions that happened on kickoff. Me personally, do I agree that all those concussions are a result of how the play is? No, I completely disagree on that, actually,” he said. “Do I feel like that play is safe? I do feel like that play is a safe play. I don’t feel like it’s a dangerous play.”
As a result, Ventrone claims that he is going to urge his players not to call fair catch on kickoffs.
“I don’t think a lot of players want to use a fair catch, nor do coaches,” Ventrone said. “So I feel confident in our group to this point. I know we’ve got a lot of good returners. We’ve got depth in all those ball handlers on the roster, so my mentality would be to return first, but we’ll explore every option that we have with it. There’s a lot of situational, things that play into effect as well, so just kind of play it by ear.”