The Athletic has live coverage of Lions vs. Ravens on “Monday Night Football.”
As the NFL’s return specialists take the field this season, it’s now a fair comparison to say they’re stepping to the plate.
The league’s most recent rule tweaks have essentially turned kickers into baseball pitchers. Now incentivized to put kickoffs in play, kickers and special teams coaches are inventing new styles of kicking that make kickoffs more difficult for returners to track, catch and (most importantly) flip into substantial chunks of yardage or touchdowns.
The arsenal is ever-increasing. The known kicks don’t even have official names. The Philadelphia Eagles have their own terms. Return specialists Tank Bigsby, John Metchie III and Britain Covey are still assigning names to the 256 league-wide kickoffs they’ve seen through two weeks — and the ones yet to come. The names sound like baseball pitches. Some are. They each capture the “Oh, boy” essence of what’s now going through a returner’s mind after a football meets a foot.
Here are a handful…
Skyball: These kickoffs are the boomers, the fly balls, the… well… skyballs. The footballs that soar off the tee and take a brief trip to the clouds before raining back down like a mortar shell. These kickoffs have been around long enough in the league to be considered conventional. Kickers once crushed these to buy their coverage defenders time to sprint from their own 35-yard line through the gauntlet. The rule tweaks have rendered skyballs obsolete. Since 2024, coverage defenders have lined up at the receiving team’s 40-yard line. To offset the head start, they can’t run until the ball is caught or hits the turf within the landing zone that begins at the receiving team’s 20.
“Hang time doesn’t really do you any favors anymore,” Eagles kicker Jake Elliott said. “So, that’s kind of gone out the window. So we, as specialists, tried to kind of figure out what kicks you can use to kind of lower down and work to your advantage.”
Touchbacks don’t do teams any favors, either. Of course, that was the NFL’s intent in moving the kickoff touchback spot from the 30-yard line to the 35. The NFL has seen a major increase in kickoffs put in play. The league-wide touchback percentage (16.2) is significantly lower than last year’s mark through two games (67.1), according to TruMedia. It’s also the league’s lowest touchback percentage through two weeks since 2006 (16.0).
However, the league-wide average for yards per kick return is lower through two weeks (25.2) than it was last season (26.6). That reflects the increased gamesmanship that’s contained within the new styles being created.
Diveball: In baseball, this would be called a Sinker. This kickoff style contains the same concept. The football flies with an initial trajectory — then takes a sudden dive. Covey categorized it as “any ball with a tiny bit of topspin.” Its objective is to beat a returner to the landing spot (by misjudgment or vulnerable positioning) and recreate the chaos of an unpredictable bounce that had mostly only been seen on punts.
“You’re essentially now playing shortstop,” Covey said.
“It’s really hard,” said Jahan Dotson, offering his perspective as the team’s punt returner. “Like, just the (kickoff) traveling in the air is so different, whereas the punts, you can kind of see the tip of the ball turn over, and you know which way it’s going to drop. As far as (what) you see on kickoff, you don’t know where it’s going to drop. If you let it drop, it can be all over the place. So it’s really weird, and you want to catch them, but you can’t. A lot of the kickers aren’t giving you an opportunity to catch it. You have to catch it on the bounce. So it’s pretty tough and challenging.”
Return specialist John Metchie III has been assigning names to the different kicks he’s seen this season. (Denny Medley / Imagn Images)
Knuckleball: If you haven’t heard of its baseball counterpart (or fed gutters with baseballs attempting it), meet Phil Niekro. The kickoff version functions the same way. As Bigsby described, the football travels spin-less, its oblong shape catching uneven air resistance, forcing it to “go all types of ways” in maddeningly unpredictable fashion. Its bounce is even more unpredictable. “It may hop up,” Bigsby said, “so you’ve got to be ready for that.”
“That one’s the hardest to return,” Covey said. “But it’s also the hardest to kick because you’ve got to put some power into that to get it past the 20-yard line.”
And accuracy.
Kickers must manage the inherent risk-reward that comes with targeting the turf. A ball that slices out of bounds still gets placed on the receiving team’s 40-yard line — and still elicits expletives from special teams coordinators. But the payoff can be huge. Any extra second it takes for the returner to secure the football could bring the coverage team 5 to 10 yards closer.
“It’s a whole new element to the game,” Metchie said.
Kickoffs are cool again. They are no longer a mostly meaningless five-second interlude between commercial breaks. NFL teams are once again placing value on the players who most impact field position. The Eagles, an organization that’s largely earned its success on the cutting edge, sent 2026 fifth- and sixth-round picks to the Jacksonville Jaguars in a trade for Bigsby in part because they were enamored with the running back’s ability as a returner. The Kansas City Chiefs affirmed Philadelphia’s assessment when they booted all four of their kickoffs away from Bigsby, instead aiming for Metchie.
Time will tell if the increased returns will spur a renaissance of a golden era that included returners like Devin Hester, Josh Cribbs, Leon Washington, J.J. Moses, Darren Sproles and Dante Hall. But for the moment, they have at the very least turned what’s recently been a snoozer into a rouser; they’ve turned the NFL’s version of a driving range into a batter-versus-pitcher chess match, tacklers included.
“It kind of puts you into a little bit more gamesmanship with some guys,” said Elliott, who’s in his ninth season with the Eagles. “And now you’re trying to take certain returners out of the game at times, and you can be a little bit more creative with that.”
Elliott would not disclose his arsenal of kicks, nor the ones he and punter Braden Mann are concocting. What kicker would at this point? Shhhh! Other kickers might be reading! They’re already watching each other on film, attempting to reverse-engineer the kicks that catch their eyes.
“Everyone’s pretty hesitant to give anything away,” Elliott said.
Bigsby was scouring film of kickoffs when a reporter approached him on Wednesday. Repetitious footage is how he’s able to recognize what kind of kicks will come off the feet of future kickoffs. Neither Bigsby, Metchie, Covey or Dotson played baseball. They’re essentially now outfielders judging the trajectory of struck balls. The Eagles sent both Bigsby and Metchie near the end zone as returners against the Chiefs. But special teams coordinator Michael Clay didn’t rule out the possibility of someone playing alone like a center fielder — a risk if opponents try to land kickoffs outside the numbers on either sideline.
There’s too little tape to mark tendencies. Clay called it “a little bit of a crapshoot.” There’s also too little film to form solid reputations. Which NFL kicker has the best knuckleball in the league? “I don’t know yet,” Covey laughed. Ahead of Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Rams, Elliott took a deeper dive into Rams kicker Joshua Karty and noticed he has “a bunch of different kinds of knuckleball kicks.” Elliott said Karty “is doing a great job with kind of inventing some new ones and hitting some tough balls to handle.” According to TruMedia, the Rams own the NFL’s best average for opposing starting field position after kickoffs (the receiving team’s 24). The Eagles rank sixth (27.1).
The new kickoffs also give way to an unintended consequence. Just as different baseball pitches tax the pitcher’s arm in different ways, different kickoff styles tax kickers’ legs in different ways. Elliott called it a “give and take.” Kickoffs in general are now “a little bit less taxing on the leg” because kickers are no longer swinging for touchbacks on a consistent basis. But with new kicks come new angles — and new ways to strain yourself if you’re not careful.
“A lot of these new ones you’re trying to get your legs in different positions than you’re used to,” Elliott said. “So you’ve got to be a little bit cautious with it. Some of them are swinging across more than you would or have a little bit more lean, so it puts a little stress on your body. But for the most part, it’s a less aggressive swing than a normal kickoff would be. So you’re able to tinker with a bunch of different things. But it is something that you’ve got to be cautious of, kind of like using a new muscle for the first time.”
So many surprises have yet to be revealed. Imagination stretches beyond the kicks themselves. Consider the coverages and the blocking. Who, anticipating a knuckleball, will first build a reverse off a short bounce? Who, working for a skyball like a batter does a fastball, will pull blockers like offensive guards and attempt counters? What out there remains unseen?
“I think you’ll see some fun things,” Covey said.
(Top photo of Jake Elliott: Denny Medley / Imagn Images)