The NFL has made some significant changes prior to the start of the 2025 NFL regular season. Just less than a month before the NFL draft, the league has made some drastic changes to the kickoff, overtime and replay assist rules.
The NFL has now made touchbacks on kickoffs to the 35-yard line instead of the 30-yard line, a lateral move by the NFL. The NFL projects that kickoff returns will rise to at least 60%, but they could be wrong.
This might incentivize teams to take more touchbacks and just start at the 35 than risk their kick returner getting hurt. Returners and teams will gladly start at the 35-yard line then run out of the endzone and get ten yards short of the 35.
While the NFL believes this will help with kick returns, don’t be surprised if this does the exact opposite and creates more touchbacks in 2025.
The next biggest rule change will be the adjustment to the regular season overtime rules. The Philadelphia Eagles submitted a proposal to have both teams possess the ball in overtime, regardless if a team scores a touchdown on their first possession.
Overtime has been the big subject of debate ever since the 2021 Divisional playoffs and now teams are finally realizing that it’s fair to both squads for them to possess the ball no matter what happens on the first drive of overtime.
The original proposal also requested that overtime be extended to 15 minutes instead of 10 minutes, but that was quickly rejected and the proposal was amended back to 10 minutes of overtime.
The last big change are the replay assist rules. On-site replay officials now have the authority to reverse flags that are called for hits on a defenseless player, face masks, horse collar, tripping and running into or roughing the kicker.
However, there will be no replay assist for any play that doesn’t have a flag thrown. While it’s a good thing for the NFL to finally use replay assist for certain penalties, this could also have a major reaction.
The games will likely become slower if every flag is challenged and maybe a majority of the calls may not even be reversed, adding only further discussion as to what constitutes a penalty or not.
Other rule changes that didn’t pass was the automatic first down via penalty rule. The Detroit Lions advocated that first downs shouldn’t be automatic if a defensive player is called for holding or illegal contact.
This rule did not pass as it needed at least 24 votes from the owners in order for it to be approved.
The other proposal the Lions made was the playoff-seeding rule. This rule change states that teams who make the playoffs should be seeded based off their regular season record instead of division championships.
This rule change was tabled for a later discussion
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