In March of 2011, the NFL voted to move kickoffs up from the 30 to the 35-yard line. That impact has been significant, and the league responded by placing a greater emphasis on kickers who can boom kickoffs into the opposing end zone.

In 2016, the NFL moved up where offenses would start following a touchback from the 20 to the 25-yard line, which made returners more likely to just take a touchback. That impact has been marginal.

The graph below shows the percentage of kickoffs that resulted in a touchback in each of the last 25 seasons.

In 2019, the NFC South had a pair of star kickoff specialists. Tampa Bay punter Bradley Pinion helped the team set a record by recording a touchback on a whopping 91% of his kickoffs (overall, the Bucs had a touchback rate of 90%, because of one onside kick).  And Carolina’s Joey Slye hit a touchback on 66 of his 69 kickoffs!

In fact, the touchback rate would be even higher than this if not for a team like the Detroit Lions. The Lions intentionally kicked short of the end zone on most kickoffs, resulting in a touchback rate of just 31%. In fact, Detroit was a really interesting test case in an otherwise forgettable season for the Lions.

Detroit had 80 kickoffs last year, with 2 of those being onside kicks. On the other 78 kicks, here’s what happened:

• 25 touchbacks, giving the return team the ball at the 25
• 2 other kickoffs resulted in returns exactly to the 25
• 1 fumble by the opposing team that was recovered by the Lions
• 26 returns that were worse than touchbacks; the average return placed the offense at between the 18- and 19-yard line, giving Detroit about 6.5 more yards to defend than a touchback. Note that this was also influenced by penalties on the return team.
• 1 kickoff out of bounds, giving the opponent the ball at the 50
• 23 kickoffs that were returned past the 25-yard line. This includes one return touchdown by Redskin Steven Sims.  Excluding the return touchdown, these 22 kickoffs brought the ball out to between the 33- and 34-yard line, giving Detroit’s defense about 8.5 fewer yards to defend.

On average, this strategy probably didn’t do much to help or hurt the team.  The touchdown and the fumble were the two huge plays, but those don’t cancel each other out (a touchdown is worse for the kicking team that recovering a fumble).  And the non-big plays basically canceled each other out.  And while this is certainly a more interesting strategy to analyze that kicking it into the end zone every play, it didn’t do anything to help the 2019 Lions.