Mark Murphy: Packers voted no on new kickoff because it "made sense to have a trial" in preseason
While the NFL adopted a new kickoff rule for 2024 on Tuesday, the Packers were one of just three teams to vote against the proposal.
Packers President and CEO Mark Murphy explained to reporters later in the day that he didn't necessarily want to implement all the changes so quickly.
"Our issue was that it's such a major change, my thought — our thought — was it makes sense, really, to have [it] as a trial or experiment in the preseason to see what — there's going to be some unintended consequences, I think," Murphy said, via Ryan Wood of PackersNews.com. "And I just felt it made sense to have a trial.
"But that said, it passed — I think it was overwhelming, it was like 29-3. So, we’ll be very supportive of it. And, we do, we have one of the better kick returners in the league," Murphy added with a laugh. "So, we’ll put that to our advantage."
Keisean Nixon has been with the Packers for the last two seasons and recently re-signed with the team after earning first-team All-Pro honors in 2022 and 2023. He's led the league in kick return attempts over the last two years. In 2023, he took out 30 kicks, averaging 26.1 yards per return. In 2022, he took 35 kicks and averaged 28.8 yards per return.
Murphy admitted that having such a talented returner helps him be supportive of the new rule, even if he didn't vote for it.
“Oh yeah, I think you have to,” Murphy said. "And I think you look at — this year, 22 percent of the kicks were returned league-wide. We were kind of the outlier, just I think due to the weather here and Keisean is such a good returner. But the Super Bowl is a good example. I mean, 13 kicks and not one returned. Only one was even returnable. Every one was up into the stands. So, it kind of had become almost a meaningless — it wasn't even a play it just went right to the 25-yard line. So, I think it was good. And I think we were all in favor of something that would be safe and to get the kick return back into the game. It was really just a question of whether we go right with it.
“The other thing I should say is that it's a one-year rule, so we'll be able to evaluate it after the year.”
The kickoff will look radically different in the NFL for 2024, but there’s a chance the clubs could agree to tweaks and changes next spring after trying it for a year.