NFL Kickoff Rule: 49ers Kyle Shanahan not surprised at surplus of touchbacks

One of the more intriguing things in the National Football League’s 2024 season was going to be the new kickoff rule and how teams would implement it. Obviously, how the 49ers use it is a follow-up question. If you have been late to the program, this post explains a lot of the nuances of the rule back when it was brought before the competition committee.

Well, two games in, and we haven’t seen much. In fact, things have gotten worse. NBC Sports Bay Area’s Matt Maiocco made a good point that in two games, 19 of 24 kickoffs have been touchbacks.

From the looks of things, it has more touchbacks. And that’s the opposite of what the league was trying to implement.

The whole idea was to get the teams to take the ball out more while lowering the injury risk. Kickoffs have been massive collisions for players, and safety is key to the league (or so they tell us). The latter we’ll have to wait and see after Sunday when we get a higher sample size, but the first two games haven’t been a great start.

What can we see from the 49ers for this? Who knows. They aren’t going to discuss scheme before the game. During the preseason Kyle Shanahan was figuring things out himself on how to do it.

And Saturday, he didn’t inspire much confidence in what the team will be doing when they play the New York Jets. He was asked about what he thought of the surplus of touchbacks in the first two games.

“I think we were kind of expecting that,” Shanahan said. “I think like you guys were, too. It’s looked that way so far, and I’d probably be surprised if it changed.”

We’ll see how the 49ers handle this new rule on Monday evening.