Through one month of the NFL season the changes to the kickoff have seemingly divided football fans. This year, the NFL decided that a touchback that first lands outside the landing zone (20 yard line back to the goal line) is brought to the 35 yard line rather than the 30 yard line like in 2024.

Is one minor change producing higher return rates, better average field position, and shorter kick hang times? Kickers are even kicking the ball in different ways to try and combat excelling return rates. We’ll look back and compare to last season to see just how much things have changed. 

Kick Type

The 2025 season has featured the highest use of non-normal kick types on kickoffs that we have seen. At SIS, we track kick types, and we classify a “normal” kickoff as a kick with a typical trajectory having a hang time between 3.3 – 3.8 seconds. 

Through the first four weeks of the season, there has been a non-normal kick on 28% of kickoffs (not including squib or onside kicks). Comparatively in 2024, there was a non-normal kick on only 7% of kickoffs. Kickers are actively reducing their hang time and changing the way they kick the ball to either add or take away spin. 

Hang time

The increased frequency of line drive kicks is manifesting itself in the hang time as well. During the 2024 season, the average hang time on NFL kicks was 3.86 seconds. Through the first month this season, the average hang time is down to 3.37 which is about half a second shorter than last season. The difference between 2024 and 2025 gives kick returners more opportunity to create explosive returns with increased return lanes available. 

The average hang time the two seasons before the Dynamic Kickoff was implemented was 4.00. A big part of this is the kicker allowing the ball to hit the ground before it can be caught by the returner, which in turn gives the kick coverage more time to cover potential return lanes. 

Even if you look within a given kick type, the kicks are spending less time in the air. On non-line-drives, the average hang time is about a third of a second shorter than it was a year ago.

Returns

The decreased hang time on kickoffs is encouraging teams to take a chance and return the ball at a much higher rate than 2024. Last season 65% of kickoffs resulted in touchbacks, whereas so far in 2025 only 17% of kickoffs have resulted in touchbacks. 

However, the results of returned kicks have been basically the same. The average length of returns are slightly down from last year (27 yards in 2024 and 25 in 2025). That’s made up by the average start of the return increasing from the 2 yard line to the 4 yard line between seasons. With touchbacks outside the landing zone being brought out to the 35, kickers are incentivized to make sure the kick lands in the landing zone thus producing returns at a significantly higher rate and those returns starting slightly farther from the end zone. 

If you incorporate the touchbacks and returns into a single average, the resulting field position has nudged forward a bit, but not by much. From 2016 to 2024, teams started their drive somewhere between the 23 and 24 yard line on average every year. In 2025 so far, the average is the 26 yard line.

Injuries

One of the big talking points around the use of the dynamic kickoff was the potential for getting more action without increasing the rate of injury. Through four weeks of kickoffs, the per-play injury rate has been consistent with previous years, but the dramatic spike in returns leads to more total injuries. 

SIS has charted more injury events on kickoffs through Week 4 than the previous three years combined. But those have come on a similar increase in returns. If you look per-return, the injury rate is a bit higher than 2023-24 but right in line with 2021-22. 

Findings

It’s still early, but a simple change of moving a touchback from the 30 yard line to the 35 yard line is producing some consequential effects in how the game looks, but it may not be changing as much as people initially thought. Contrary to popular belief, the average starting field position for all returned kicks is the 29 yard line, which is the same for both 2024 and 2025. Injuries are up, but that’s just a factor of there being more football happening. 

One thing we know for sure: return rates are dramatically increasing and kickers are kicking the ball with less hang time in order to keep the length of return down. So far it’s been working.