Donald Trump has slammed the NFL’s new kickoff rule, demanding the league ‘get rid of it’.
Trump secured a second term as president this week after a resounding victory over Kamala Harris in a one-sided election.
Although he’s busy planning his return to the White House, Trump clearly took time out of his schedule to watch some football on Sunday.
He clearly wasn’t impressed by the NFL’s new kickoff rule, which was introduced at the start of the season in September.
The president-elect took to his Truth Social platform, writing: ‘The NFL should get rid of the ridiculous new Kickoff Rule!’
Donald Trump slammed the NFL’s new kickoff rule on Sunday, demanding they get rid of it
The president-elect called the rule, which came into place this season, ‘ridiculous’
The NFL introduced a new ‘dynamic’ kickoff for the 2024 season in a bid to reduce the number of high-speed collisions amid an ‘unacceptable injury rate’.
The change was also designed to incentivize teams to run the ball back – rather than call a fair catch.
The change sees players from the kicking team now line up on the opposition 40-yard line – rather than behind the kicker.
They cannot move until the ball hits the ground or a player in the landing zone or the end zone.
The designated landing zone sits between the receiving team’s goal line and its 20-yard line. Any kick that lands inside this area must be returned.
It is not the first time Trump has voiced criticism of the rule change. He did so at the Alabama-Georgia college football game in September.
‘I don’t know what they’re doing with the kickoff return in the NFL, and I don’t want to get involved in controversy, but it looks so bad, and I noticed they haven’t done that in college, and they shouldn’t do it, and I think the NFL should go back,’ Trump told Outkick.com’s Clay Travis.
Referencing the more traditional kickoff setup still utilized by the NCAA, Trump conceded ‘maybe it’s a little more dangerous’ before quickly contradicting himself.
‘I doubt it’s any more dangerous’, he told Travis. ‘It is, you know, it’s football. I think [the NFL] made a terrible mistake of doing that. But you look at this, [college football hasn’t] done it, it was the first thing I was looking at, I said, ”have they done it?” It looks so strange and you don’t take something that’s working and change it.
‘But this is really big-time football,’ he said, referring to Alabama’s upset of rival Georgia. ‘And it’s great to see.’
