Dallas City News

For the last two years, the Cowboys have had one of the very best return men in the league in KaVontae Turpin. The former USFL MVP made a name for himself right away in Dallas, returning two kickoffs for touchdowns in the preseason and going on to earn Pro Bowl honors for the 2022 season. In two years as the Cowboys’ primary return specialist, Turpin has accumulated 382 yards on punt returns and 800 yards on kickoff returns.

Yet Turpin has remained scoreless on special teams. He scored his first career touchdown in the NFL in the season opener last year, bit it came on a run play near the endzone. Turpin went on to catch three more touchdowns later in the year as part of an expanded role on offense, but he has yet to take one to the house as a return man.

While that seems like a mere inevitability given his talent, Turpin’s odds of doing so have gone up with the change to the way kickoffs are handled in the NFL. As has been covered in great detail, the NFL adopted the kickoff format that the XFL had been using, and the change was actually spearheaded by Cowboys special teams coordinator John Fassel. The motivations behind the change were caused by an uptick in kickoffs actually being returned, as well as cutting down on the astronomically high rate of serious injuries that occurred on kickoff returns in the past.

So far, with one full week of preseason games in the can, the results of the new kickoff rule have been impressive:

The data above is limited specifically to the first week of preseason games from the last three years, in an effort to keep the sample sizes consistent. As you can see, returners are taking the ball out at a much higher rate than they previously were. Not only are they attempting returns more, but they’re picking up more yardage, thus improving the average starting field position.

Last year, the Cowboys ranked 14th in average starting field position, with their average drive beginning at their own 29-yard line. That includes drives that begin after a turnover from the other team, kickoffs that went for a touchback, and kickoffs that were actually returned. They also ranked 14th in total kickoff return attempts, often taking the touchback instead of attempting a return.

Still, if the league’s average starting field position from returned kickoffs last year was the 23-yard line, and the league average for starting field position in total was the 28-yard line, it’s easy to get excited about what a 28.5 average for returned kickoffs under the new rule might do for the Cowboys, especially with the electric Turpin back there.

Of course, the caveat here is that this is just the preseason. In fact, the Cowboys didn’t even play Turpin this week, and coaches around the league have hinted at the notion that they will be running more vanilla schemes for kickoff returns during the preseason so as to not give away any secrets.

In other words, the first week’s worth of data on this new kickoff rule may not be the most predictive data set out there, and things will surely change as teams get more used to the new setup and as starters are taking the bulk of the snaps on these plays as well. Still, the early results are encouraging when considering the initial goal of creating more opportunities for exciting kickoff returns.

It’s even more exciting for the Cowboys, given the man they view as their first team return specialist. Turpin has already been one of the league’s very best in this regard, and the new kickoff format seems primed to give him even more opportunities to drastically change the course of a game.