Here's why deferring the on-side kickoff alternative proposal is an opportunity lost

DENVER — For the second consecutive year, the NFL’s owners tabled a proposal that would have created a fourth-down scrimmage play as an alternative to the on-side kickoff.

Last year, the Broncos made the proposal. This year, the Philadelphia Eagles followed suit, suggesting that the football would be placed at the kicking team’s 25-yard line for a fourth-and-15 play in lieu of the on-side kickoff — with a limit of two potential attempts per game.

The goal — in theory — was to restore the chances of getting an extra possession to what they were before the 2018 changes to kickoff rules turned the on-side kickoff from one of the most random-yet-dramatic moments in the sport into an afterthought.

Consider this: From 2013-17, NFL teams converted 15.6 percent of 302 on-side kickoff attempts — from a single-season high of 21.8 percent in 2017 to a low of 11.5 percent in 2016.

That dropped to 10.5 percent in the last two regular seasons.

So when the ill-fated Alliance of American Football replaced on-side kickoffs with fourth-and-12 at the kicking team’s 28 — a modified version of an idea first floated by current Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano — it was not about revolutionizing the game. It was simply about restoring the percentage to what it had been in previous years.

“There is definitely that theory that you don’t want to make the comeback too easy,” Rich McKay, the chairman of the NFL’s competition committee, said via NFL.com. “You worked all game to get ahead.”

But this isn’t about making the comeback “too easy.” It’s about finding a remedy for rules changes to kickoffs that made comebacks too hard, thus returning the chances to their pre-2018 levels.

Remember when the Broncos lost to the Los Angeles Rams in 2018? Denver was left for dead when the Rams took a 10-point lead with 3:15 remaining. The Broncos scored with 1:22 remaining to narrow the deficit to three points, but there was little buzz on that frigid day. That’s because the league was nearly midway through a season in which kicking teams recovered just four on-side kickoffs — eight fewer than in 2017.

“It’s completely changed,” Broncos special-teams coordinator Tom McMahon said a few weeks later. “Because you can only have five-by-five now … You used to have six guys on one side, four on the other, and all kinds of formations and movement. Can’t have any movement anymore. So, you know you’re going to get a stagnant, five-by-five. Where they put them, it could change. But it’s really hard to get to that ball now.”

Immediately after that comment, McMahon was asked about the most effective way to recover on-side kickoffs.

“I can’t give that away because we think we’ve finally found it,” he said. “We’ve worked it. But the most effective way is you’ve got to find a way to get those guys to make a play. And if you’re making a play, I’ve got to get somebody on you to block you while you’re trying to make that play. So, it’s just trying to take that field and shrink that field into one spot.”

McMahon might have found an idea then, but it didn’t translate; the Broncos haven’t recovered an on-side kickoff since the rules changes.

But 2020 would have been a perfect moment to try something new.

This year could be unlike any other in NFL history, anyway. In a year that could see fewer fans in the stands, has already witnessed an overhaul to offseason work and might endure pandemic-related stoppages, why not give an audacious new idea a whirl? Even if it begins with a preseason trial, that would be better than dawdling and waiting another year.

Alas, the on-side kickoff will remain what it has been for the last two seasons: a bore. (Except for Atlanta, where the Falcons boast on-side kickoff cheat code Younghoe Koo, who successfully converted two on-side kickoffs last Thanksgiving against the Saints.)

If you remove Koo from the picture, NFL teams converted just 9.0 percent of their on-side kickoffs in the last two regular seasons since the rules changes (10-of-111).

Further, all this reveals one of many reasons why the NFL needs a developmental league. The assets of the XFL are for sale, and according to Daniel Kaplan of The Athletic, there are over a dozen bidders.

Such a league would not only create an additional avenue to develop talent, particularly on the offensive line and at quarterback. That’s where NFL Europe flourished in the mid-to-late 1990s, cranking out three passers who started in the Super Bowl: Kurt Warner, Brad Johnson and Jake Delhomme.

NFL Europe also helped the league develop coaches and staff. Game officials served apprenticeships there before assuming NFL roles.

The league was also an incubator for rules tweaks.

Some were wacky, like awarding four points for field goals of 50 or more yards. (Imagine how lethal a weapon Baltimore’s Justin Tucker would be if his blasts counted for four points.)

But some ended up having practical value. The 10-minute overtime was first tried in NFL Europe. So was the notion of both teams receiving a possession in overtime — although not without the first-possession touchdown exception that exists in the NFL today.

The NFL eliminated NFL Europe — eventually known as NFL Europa — in 2007. NFL teams weren’t sending the caliber of prospects they allocated in the 1990s, and the cost of running a developmental league in Europe was exorbitant. But a stateside developmental league might be practical, and allow the NFL to test new ideas.

That doesn’t exist, so it’s up to the NFL to use its games — preseason and regular season — to try new ideas. Sure, it might spook some of the old-school types. But the NFL is in the midst of an offseason in which its decisiveness and adaptability has kept it in the spotlight as other leagues have been forced to go dark.

Fortune favors the bold, as the cliche goes, and providing an alternative for the on-side kick would have been a bold stroke for a league that has more often than not reaped rewards when it embraced change.