The new kickoff formation preserves the onside kick, sort of. While the device for the kicking team to maintain possession can be used by a team trailing in the fourth quarter, the surprise onside kick is dead and gone.
Most don’t have a problem with it, because it had become a rare aspect of modern football.
Still, the possibility always lingered. Now, it’s been erased.
A coach whose who once deployed the tactic in a fairly big game isn’t a fan of the change.
“One thing I don’t like about it is that we’re trying to take away the onside kick,” former Steelers coach Bill Cowher recently told CBS Sports. “As a guy who used an onside kick in the Super Bowl, it made me very sad when I saw that happen. . . . I still think that’s an exciting play.”
The Steelers used a surprise onside kick in Super Bowl XXX against the Cowboys, and Pittsburgh recovered it.
While Cowher acknowledges that not many surprise onside kicks happened, he doesn’t think it should have been eliminated from the game.
“I understand the numbers are low,” Cowher said. “But on an onside kick the numbers should be low. It’s a unique play. It’s a hard play. It’s a strategical part of the game. It slows down the front line. . . .
“To be able to do this in the third quarter, the front line starts to get back and loosen up a little bit. Or you can put one in that little dead area and it hits the ground. Those are the things that are exciting.
“Is it gonna be successful? Probably not? That’s the risk and reward. Sometimes you don’t have to be successful to make a point. Don’t leave early because we’re gonna try it.”
The problem is that, even if an onside kick under the new formation could be used at any time in the game, it would have to be declared before it happens. Otherwise, the kicking team uses the new formation that has the kicker at his own 35 — and the other 10 players 25 yards away, on the receiving team’s 40.
The change also wipes out the various other things that a team could do, such as setting up for an onside kick and pooching the ball into the “dead area” (as Cowher described it) behind the receiving team. Under the new rules, any onside kick that goes untouched for 15 yards behind the receiving team’s setup zone results in a 15-yard penalty from the spot of the kick.
So if, for example, an onside kick from the kicking team’s 35 makes it past the receiving team’s 40 untouched, the receiving team gets the ball at the kicking team’s 20.
Yes, the onside kick has survived. But there will be no uncertainty or mystery to it. Everyone will know it’s definitely coming. It will never be a surprise. Even if it was barely used before, it will now be used never.
