There is no such thing as a English noun that adequately conveys what thousands and thousands of followers expertise on the eve of the professional soccer season. Solely one thing like the traditional Greek idea of ataraxia — which accurately means the absence of disturbance or bother however connotes a type of elegant contentedness — begins to strategy our beautiful feeling of detachment from all worldly cares. The N.F.L. makes ataraxia accessible to each one in all us three days per week, which ought to quantity excessive among the many in any other case doubtful achievements of late modernity.
This 12 months, alas, my sense of tranquillity is being threatened by the N.F.L.’s resolution to alter the foundations governing kickoffs. For the 2023 season, which begins on Thursday, any participant on the receiving workforce might be allowed to sign for a “honest catch” from anyplace between the objective line and his 25-yard line, reasonably than having to discipline the ball and face the wrath of the 11 gamers on the opposite workforce converging on him like a phalanx of hoplites. After a good catch, the ball might be positioned on the 25-yard line (simply as it will after a conventional “touchback” in the long run zone).
If, poor creature, you don’t comply with soccer, the vital level is that the league is creating an incentive to not return the ball on kickoffs — the kind of play reported to have the next threat of concussions. This new rule, adopted within the identify of participant security, is the newest and most drastic in a sequence of modifications that the N.F.L. has made to the kickoff lately, in what appears to be a prelude to eliminating it altogether.
It’s a horrible thought. Along with being extensively unpopular with followers, gamers and coaches, the brand new rule is questionable in its efficacy, soulless in its company logic and a risk to the ethos of blue-collar toughness that after outlined this nice recreation. I concern the wrath of the soccer gods.
Like Gaul, soccer is split into three components: offense, protection and particular groups. The kickoff belongs to the final of those phases, and in some ways it’s the side of soccer that has modified the least because the recreation’s invention. Offenses have developed up to now half century from lumbering floor operations that rewarded uncooked collective effort (“three yards and a cloud of mud”) to high-flying passing assaults that favor an elite handful of “ability” gamers. Defenses have completed their finest to adapt with a continuously altering set of subtle methods. However kickoffs have largely remained the identical, a protect of old school hustle, an area during which effort can matter greater than God-given capability.
Aside from kick-return specialists — speedsters similar to Ray-Ray McCloud of the San Francisco 49ers — particular groups gamers are usually drawn from the second and third strings of lively rosters, unheralded gamers simply hoping to make the squad. They are usually males like Grant Stuard, a linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts and the final participant chosen within the 2021 N.F.L. draft. (That is presumably one motive the brand new fair-catch choice was all however ignored throughout this 12 months’s preseason exhibition video games: Gamers seeking to survive ultimate roster cuts enthusiastically returned kicks within the hope of impressing their coaches with an enormous runback.)
A handful of gamers, similar to Matthew Slater of the New England Patriots, have raised particular groups play to a type of artwork kind. Slater, a once-obscure fifth-round draft pick of U.C.L.A. who has by no means been a full-time participant on offense or protection, commonly downs kicks deep in opponents’ territory, routinely makes troublesome open-field tackles and has been chosen to the Professional Bowl 10 occasions. That’s the type of underdog story soccer nonetheless wants.
However kickoffs usually are not nearly unsung work ethic. They’ve additionally produced most of the N.F.L.’s most fun moments: the so-called Music Metropolis Miracle in 2000; Desmond Howard’s 99-yard landing return in Tremendous Bowl XXXI, which helped earn him the distinction of the sport’s most useful participant; Gale Sayers, seemingly each time he touched the ball.
Eliminating kickoffs additionally means sacrificing a number of the science of the sport. Particular groups have lengthy been a key part of technique, particularly for the sport’s best coaches, similar to Invoice Belichick of the New England Patriots (who has been identified to offer impromptu lectures on the topic to bewildered journalists). The 2010 San Diego Chargers had arguably the very best offense and the very best protection within the league and a roster filled with present and future Corridor of Famers — they usually failed even to make the playoffs due to their traditionally unhealthy particular groups play.
All of those issues, you may protest, pale earlier than the objective of constructing gamers safer. Nevertheless it’s not apparent that the brand new fair-catch rule may have this desired impact. There is no such thing as a good proof that earlier modifications to the kickoff have helped as a lot as anticipated. In line with information collected and analyzed by Sports activities Illustrated, concussions throughout kickoffs practically doubled from 2020 to 2022, which may very well be a sign that earlier rule modifications are having unintended penalties that enhance threat — extra squib kicks, maybe, or extra floating punt-like kicks, each of which could lead to extra collisions.
There’s a deeper level right here concerning the questionable knowledge of sudden, top-down change. Soccer will not be a rationalist enterprise whose guidelines will be adjusted on a whim based on the tinkering logic of enterprise consultants and risk-averse company legal professionals. It’s an primarily violent recreation with a selected historical past and with gamers and coaches and a fan base of thousands and thousands who care about its continuity with its previous. Evolution can happen, however organically.
Many gamers and coaches formally opposed the brand new kickoff rule when it was proposed, however like many employees earlier than them, they’ve discovered themselves helpless within the face of H.R. Some coaches have continued to voice their opposition, together with Belichick, John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens (who has advised that the rule change could lead to extra accidents) and Andy Reid of the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs (who has warned that if the league continues to remove basic facets of the sport, N.F.L. groups will discover themselves “taking part in flag soccer”).
Throughout a latest preseason broadcast, the previous Arizona Cardinals fullback Ron Wolfley referred to as the rule change an “abomination,” sounding a suitably apocalyptic observe, and advised that soccer by definition can’t be secure.
I for one agree with him. I hope that the N.F.L. chooses to rethink and reverse its resolution on the finish of the season (because it has typically completed with different rule modifications). Soccer, with its stylized warfare between city-states, its ritualized celebration of morally ambivalent heroes, its trophies and its encouragement of a quasi-pagan fatalism within the face of defeat, is among the many solely vestiges of our classical inheritance.
Homer captured the spirit of the N.F.L. when he dismissed mortality as beneath the priority of the great-souled: “Whilst are the generations of leaves, such are these additionally of males. As for the leaves, the wind scattereth some upon the earth.”
