The NFL may like to call kickoffs “Dynamic,” but the most dynamic thing that can happen on a kickoff hasn’t happened at all this season.
There has still not been a single kickoff return touchdown, four weeks into the 2026 NFL season. The longest kickoff return of the season was a 79-yarder by Miami’s Jaylen Wright, who was knocked out of bounds at the 18-yard line at Las Vegas in Week 1.
That continues a downward trend in kickoff return touchdowns that began before the 2024 adoption of the “dynamic kickoff” and hasn’t changed under the new rules, which have encouraged more returns but haven’t resulted in more big plays. There were only six kickoff return touchdowns all of last season, and seven in 2024. In 2023, the last season of the old kickoff rules, there were only four touchdown returns.
Kickoff return touchdowns were once commonplace. From 2000 to 2010 there were at least a dozen kickoff return touchdowns league-wide every year. In 2007 there were 25 kickoff return touchdowns, the high-water mark for the 21st Century.
Then, in 2011, the kickoff was moved up from the 30-yard line to the 35, and kickoff return touchdowns went into a decline as more kickoffs went for touchbacks. That decline hasn’t reversed with the dynamic kickoff.
For all the talk that the dynamic kickoff would make the play more exciting, it really hasn’t happened. Kickoff return touchdowns are among the most exciting plays in football, but we hardly ever see them anymore.