Excitement and Skepticism: Football's New Season Kicks Off
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Oh, it's a football Friday and it does feel glorious the minute we hit the month of August.
00:07We got football right out of the gate, the Chicago Bears and the Houston Texans.
00:11But Joe Ranieri, I'm one of those guys that says to myself, I am just so excited to see
00:15football back on my TV.
00:17I don't care what type of football it is.
00:19I watched about 45 minutes of the pregame show yesterday.
00:21Shout out Jason Kelsey doing big things there on ESPN and away you go into the season.
00:26But it seems like every single segment, and rightfully so, usually I don't hype myself
00:31up.
00:32It's like, oh my goodness, I want to watch this whole game.
00:33But for the first time in a long time, I had to get to see the opening kickoff.
00:37I typically say, why?
00:39Just because football is back?
00:40Like, no.
00:41The changing of the rules and the concept changes.
00:43Now granted, these are going to change throughout the season.
00:45Nobody's going to tip their hand, Joe, and say, you know what?
00:47Let me put my best reverse kick return play the first time we see this year.
00:52It's going to be vanilla.
00:53But let's start here before we get to the game.
00:55What were your thoughts preseason, and I say we're in preseason now, but before the
00:58season started, about the kickoff rule?
01:01And then now that you've seen the new kickoff in action, what are your thoughts on that?
01:07If I had just, you know, woken up from a coma and turned that game on last night and said,
01:13I'd be like, oh, so the XFL is playing Thursday nights now?
01:16Is that what we've got?
01:17Oh, this looks like a lot of fun.
01:20Like, what the hell are we doing here?
01:22First of all, you've had how long to even try and get up to speed with this style of
01:27kickoff?
01:28And every time I turned around, there were guys out of formation, guys that were jumping
01:33off.
01:34They were too far ahead.
01:35They were like, what in the world is going on here?
01:37I'm a big proponent.
01:38If it ain't broke, we ain't fixing it here.
01:41I do not understand this.
01:43Maybe it'll get better in three months, Donnie, but I am very skeptical on the gimmicky stuff
01:49here on what we're doing.
01:51The hard part is getting used to it, right?
01:53It's the optics of it, because I do think the NFL was right to say, well, there's two
01:57ways we can go about this.
01:58We can try to improve and actually have a kickoff, or we can just do away with it and
02:02place the ball in the 25-yard line.
02:03Now, when you do that, NFL owners probably would love it, because you know what they
02:06would go?
02:07OK, I've got a 53-man roster, 55-man roster.
02:09Oh, if we don't need special teams, I can now only pay 40 guys.
02:12This is fantastic.
02:13The NFL union's not going to go for that, because then jobs would go away.
02:16Those backup, backup linebackers, they're used on special teams.
02:19But I got to tell you, you're right about it.
02:21We will get used to it.
02:23But the first couple times that we watched it last night, it actually doesn't feel like
02:27football.
02:28Now, when they catch it and start to return it, it does.
02:30But the fact that there's a kicker all by himself who launches the ball and designed
02:34to get it between the 10- and 5-yard line, but nobody is moving out there, it's just
02:38like an eerie concept.
02:39And you're right.
02:40It does feel XFL, UFL-ish at times.
02:43Now, also, let me ask you this question.
02:46Watching it play out last night, we're going to see it hundreds of more times in the preseason.
02:49Do you expect this to have a positive influence on scoring, negligible, or have a negative
02:55influence, as just there's going to be maybe penalty flags flying all over the place?
03:00That's a great question, and that's the million-dollar question, right, on what are we going to get
03:04here with this, Donnie?
03:05Does this mean more?
03:06Does it mean not?
03:07Does downing the ball in the end zone and getting an extra 5 yards, right, I think they're
03:11bringing it out to the 30 now, does that come into play?
03:16Is that extra 5 yards going to make a difference?
03:19I don't know.
03:20I know they asked Devin Hester last night on the broadcast, who, you know, won the greatest
03:26kick return of all time, they were like, what do you think of this?
03:29And he's like, I'm kind of shocked nobody brought it back to the house, you know?
03:33He said, I'm kind of shocked they didn't get more yardage from it and, you know, gave themselves
03:39better field position.
03:40So, listen, the one thing I know is the longer it goes on, there are enough brilliant NFL
03:45minds that are going to figure out ways to exploit this, even if Bill Belichick is not
03:50on the sidelines this season.