Before the start of the 2024 season, the NFL's 32 owners voted to make a dramatic rule change to the kickoff, and now, the same thing could soon be happening to the onside kick.
During the NFL's winter meeting on Wednesday, Troy Vincent, the league's executive vice president of football operations, said that replacing the onside kick will be something that definitely gets discussed during the offseason. Heading into Week 15, there have only been three recoveries all year on 41 kicks (7.3%) and because of that, the NFL views it as a "dead play."
"We need to look at that. That's a dead play," Vincent said, via Pro Football Talk. "That is a ceremonial play. Very low recovery rate. When we look at the kickoff and maybe where the touchback area should be during the offseason, we need to revisit the onside kick."
One option for the league would be a rule that's been proposed multiple times over the past few years. Instead of attempting an onside kick, teams would get one down to convert a fourth-and-20, and if they get 20 yards, then they would maintain possession of the ball. The Eagles were the most recent team to propose this rule, and according to Vincent, it seems to be gaining some traction.
"It's something that started back with, if I'm not mistaken, John Elway was the first proposal about six years ago," Vincent said. "The fourth-and-17 or fourth-and-23, one of those, and then over the previous three or four years, Philadelphia [has proposed it]. It has garnered [support from] where it started and the votes that it received, and where it ended a year ago, there has been progress."
A version of the fourth-and-20 rule was actually voted on by NFL owners in 2019. Even though the competition committee voted 7-1 in favor of the proposal, the league's 32 owners voted against the rule. The rule was popular enough that it was proposed again in both 2020 and 2021, but in each case, the owners decided to table the discussion, which meant that no vote was held. The rule was once again proposed this year (by the Eagles), but the owners voted it down.
Based on how things are going, though, it could actually get voted through in 2025.
"Those are all the things that we should be exploring," Vincent said. "If we're going to have a ceremonial play on the way it is today, we've got to be creative [in trying to change it]. Our coaches, they can be creative enough to come up with a good, solid, competitive play to bring some excitement back in those situations."
One reason the onside kick has been such a failure is because teams have to declare when they're going to do it. When the new kickoff rule was implemented, that changed the onside rule so that teams were only able to attempt an onside kick if they were trailing in the fourth quarter and they had to let the other team know that an onside kick was coming. The onside kick rule clearly isn't working, which is why the NFL is looking to change it.