Everyone enjoys an exciting football game, where the suspense builds as fans wonder who will come out on top. This constant anticipation is part of what makes the sport so popular. Obviously, nobody wants to see their team get blown out. But at the same time, if a team can make a comeback too easily, it diminishes the significance of the game. This is the balancing act the NFL competition committee faces as it considers changing the onside kick rule, with a proposal for a one-time 4th-and-20 play as an alternative. In this scenario, if the offense converts on a single play, they would continue their drive as if they had a successful onside kick—effectively ending the onside kick as we know it today. Interestingly, this idea has been brought up multiple times in recent years— in 2019, 2020, 2021, and most recently, in 2024. Heading into the 2025 offseason, this proposal seems to have more momentum than ever. With the NFL competition committee meeting in late March to decide on this significant rule change, it’s a good time to explore the current state of the onside kick. I also want to look at how the NFL could properly implement this new version of the onside kick if they decide to vote in that direction.
In the 2024-2025 season, following the adoption of the XFL’s kickoff rules, the NFL made significant changes to onside kicks as well. Most notably, an onside kick could only be attempted when a team is trailing in the fourth quarter, and the team had to announce their intention to attempt the onside kick before running the play. As expected, this dramatically affected the success rate of the play, which dropped from 16.4% to just 7.3% this year—making it a “dead play” by NFL standards. From a competition standpoint, these new onside kick rules make it nearly impossible for a team to mount a comeback late in a game. Also, forcing a team to announce their onside kick attempt takes away from the excitement of the play as a whole. Famous plays, like the New Orleans surprise onside kick at the start of the second half of the Super Bowl, or the Pat McAfee onside kick to himself, would have been impossible under these new rules. The old onside kick rules added an extra level of excitement to the game while giving the opposing team just a bit more of an opportunity to make a comeback than they do currently. If the NFL doesn’t want to implement the 4th-and-20 conversion play, the solution is easy. They should simply reinstate the old onside kick rules, keeping it as a rare, high-risk, high-reward play.
Now let’s consider the potential ways the competition committee could implement this new form of the onside kick during the offseason. The main idea is to replace the onside kick with a one-chance 4th-and-20 play, though some have suggested alternatives, such as a 4th-and-17 or 4th-and-23 play. If the NFL wants to keep a completion percentage similar to the old onside kick rules, a 4th-and-20 play would likely be the best distance. According to data from The Sporting News, plays longer than 4th and 15 have a 13.9% conversion rate—just a couple of percentage points below the old onside kick success rate of 16.4%. Anything much lower than 20 yards, say a 4th-and-15 play, has a higher completion rate of 21.9%—which feels too high for a play that can be a complete momentum shift during a game. Still, my biggest problem with this idea is that it feels like just one more obstacle for the defense to overcome in a league that already has so many rules against them. I can see how this play could be successfully implemented in the NFL, but if the vote does pass, the competition committee will need to be very intentional with the implementation of the play in order to maintain balance.
The onside kick has always been one of the more unpredictable plays in football. Now that we may finally see a significant change, the overall impact it may have on the NFL is also unpredictable. How much more valuable would good offenses be in an already offense-heavy league? How much less valuable might special teams become? We most likely won’t know for a couple of months, but the NFL could be seeing some big shakeups this offseason as the competition committee continues to try to make the kickoff and onside kick more of a factor in games.
