San Francisco 49ers Just Quietly Got MORE Good News

with the new NFL kickoff rules teams will be forced to make difficult decisions for example will they stick with the kick it to the end zone strategy and just take the Touchback to the now 30 yard line or will they play the NFL's games with them how will teams handle the fact that 25% of kickoffs are going to result in the kicker being involved in the tackling process Kyle Madson picked 49ers punter Mitch wisnowski to be the 49ers kicker for the new kickoffs and his reasoning is actually pretty genius but there are so many layers to this there's the Kansas City Chiefs approach there's the Baltimore Ravens approach and then of course what are the 49ers going to do in today's video I'm going to break down the trade-offs tell you why I think Kyle Madson is not only right and on track but how this could present as a massive special teams Advantage for the 49ers over other teams this season if you're new here I'm Nate and we are talking the San Francisco 49ers every single day on this channel really helps me out if you would hit that subscribe button but don't miss out on all the conversation the good news is this I think the 49ers may have a beautiful mismatch against other NFL teams in a dude named Mitch wisnowski who could be the kicker this season because of the mere fact that the guy can tackle we're going to get more into that in a little bit we're going to get there but 2023 was the lowest kick return year in the National Football League in the last decade has been sliding scale of less and less kickoff returns kick returns and more towards kicking the ball just out and making it not even an option and it has made kickoffs less fun to watch as a viewer uh but I don't know if that's exactly why the NFL wants to change this I think part of it is because of that I think we also have this problem the NFL knows the publicity that follows around players getting injured especially with things like CTE in the long term is bad for business and so they're trying to figure out and have been for a long time trying to figure out how to make it safer but still more still fun to watch right and they're looking down the barrel of the reality that the safer it gets the less fun it is and unfortunately even the stats would say it isn't actually that much safer nowadays than in the past so they made this rule change that's that's what they've done we don't know by the way if the rule change is going to be a forever thing if the rule change is just for now and it doesn't go well they've tried other things in the past this could just be a trial period for this season and then it goes away so that presents a really unique opportunity for some teams and a huge disadvantage for other teams and I'm going to break that down for you teams have to manage the reality though and so it's something to think about what are these teams going to do and how are they going to organize around trying to avoid big injuries but also trying to make the most of the situation in front of you and in my mind nobody had a great deal of time to plan for these new kickoff rules from a Personnel perspective yes of course you could go out there and you can make sure you have special teams individuals who have the ability to tackle and you can make sure that you have dudes who have kicked a ball before but that's not really going to be easy in this exact situation 10 years from now if this rule continues to go on teams will be able to prepare for that they'll be able to find mismatches in their draft and they'll be able to watch college football players and look for those guys that specifically have excellent tackling ability as a kicker and that tackling ability just got far more important we'll talk about that later with Justin Tucker but some of the questions that come out of this do you look at your defense and find out who has any soccer history in their background do you look at your kickers and find out how many of them have any tackling experience do you want to risk your best kicker and put them out there as a tackler every single time your team scores a point on top of that will this new rule even stick around all of these questions leave a lot of advantage to any teams who have a player who can kick the ball and can also tackle I think you get where I'm going with this there's a massive Advantage this team to teams like the 49ers who have individuals who can kick a ball and can tackle and that's Mitch wisnowski now now if you go for that kick it to the end zone strategy I'll put this the rules up on here just to remind you um and I don't actually think this rule I'm about to tell you is on here but if you go with the kick it out of the end zone sort of strategy then the reality is the other teams picking up the ball now at the 30 yard line used to be 20 then it was 25 now it's 30 and that's crazy when you think about it because if it's in a tight game scenario and the other team only needs a field goal or say it's a two possession game and the other team needs a field goal and a touchdown and getting in a field goal range really quickly could be a huge Advantage then you don't want to be in the situation where you're not sure if your guy can drop the ball right where he needs to you also don't want to be in the situation where you put the wrong guy back there because they're a great tackler but they are super inconsistent and they kick the ball and it lands on the 20 yard line I'm going to show you some visuals to back up what I'm saying here in just a second but you've probably heard of how other teams are handling this and if you have a stout defense and your team is in the lead then sure you say to heck with the rule we're just going to kick the ball and we're going to let it go all the way out and we're going to put Moody out there whoever and we're just going to let it happen and we're not going to worry about it because our defense is good enough and or we're up considerably in this game and we don't need to worry about them getting the ball the 30 let's not take any risks I understand that play I think I think the reality is it will just be a lot less it's not going to happen as often as we're used to seeing it right now this season now I pulled up some visuals just from uh obviously here's here's the big reason that there's this mismatch right so all of these dudes in the middle sorry my cursor is on the wrong spot all these dudes in the middle are stuck there they've all got to be at that exact location right and they're stuck within this Landing zone or excuse me Landing zone is back here but they're stuck within this Zone I forget what it's called and uh setup Zone and inside this setup Zone uh you have to wait until the ball touches a player or the ground which can actually result if the kick is really good in a massive gap which is interesting it will beg the question who do you want as the receivers do you want a guy who has just straight line speed or do you want a running back who has run through gaps a million times in their lives and they know how to run through what could potentially be one solid Gap and then make a kick or Miss right so this is going to be very very interesting to watch I think it's going to be a lot of fun here's a picture of the literal distance between a dude catching the ball inside the 10 yard line and how far his team is way over here at the 30 yard line so there is a huge huge gap between there and you just to get a a visual I took another screenshot just showing kind of by by the time they got to the 20 ydd line which you would have to think most teams are expecting at the very least to get to the 20 yard line that's going to be an easy kind of Target there where you're like I have to get to the 20 yard line This is guaranteed must happen so if they get to the 20 yard line right here's here's a guy who virtually on the play and I can't show you the play because of copyright apologies but this this dude has missed has Mak his H excuse me he has he has totally found a mismatch against the returning team and he got through basically just by touching right I mean it was quick so this is kind of your best case scenario if you're catching the ball inside the 10 your best case scenario is your kicking team is getting there about the 20 right and from there he ends up actually miss getting past the first guy because you also have to have such a short period of time where it has to line up where the guy that gets through also has to be in the right position on the field so it'll be so much fun to see how teams are going to play this and how drastic things will go in order to play this right so that being said Kansas City Chiefs we you you probably heard by now this was now I think two weeks ago and I'm going to talk about the Baltimore Ravens are doing too but the Kansas City Chiefs are planning on putting or at least testing out the idea of putting safety Justin Reed out there for kickoffs if he can kick the ball he's a great tackler and it is a genius move if you have a safety that can kick the ball because a safety is used to being that guy at the back right he's used to be in that position where he might be the final guy between the the running the running player the receiving player and the touchdown behind him so it makes a lot of sense to me why the Kansas City Chiefs are thinking about using a safety in this position of course assuming he can kick the ball consistently and to a decent range if you're kicking the ball to the 18 yd line then you're giving that team you're giving them a massive Advantage they should probably make it to like the 27 or 28 before getting even having to make one guy Miss that's crazy field position and you've made a big mistake you should have just kicked it out at that point right uh that's how I see it in my mind all right I haven't watched a ton of XFL but that's from what I've seen that's what it looks like to me now Baltimore they're thinking with Justin Tucker that um they going they're hoping and and Ravens fans will tell you Justin Tucker is the best kicker in the NFL history and all that good stuff and that's fine whatever I don't really need to get into that argument today it doesn't matter to me but Justin Tucker is beefing up and lifting we learned last week um he's trying to get beefed up before the season because he wants to be the guy he wants to be the guy that Harbaugh says we'll give you the go right so if this is a really interesting play because if Tucker can't prove that he's a a fantastic tackler then you have play you've made a huge risk putting him out there not just because of the tackling issue but also because of the fact that if he gets injured on that play which does happen in kickoffs if he gets injured then you're in a really dangerous situation um you're going to see also with these lines which I think is so weird but it's smart by the NFL to I guess XFL to play it this way right because of these lines you don't get a lot of depth so you're not hitting layers and layers of people sometimes it looks almost like rugby where the guys are are once they are actually meeting there's not a lot of depth and if you get past that front line you could be going for it so it will be super super interesting to watch now obviously the question that we care about right is what are we going to do what are the 49ers going to do and Kyle Madson says put Mitch wishnowski in I love this take by the way um I can only show you a really short clip because of copyright reasons but remember this from preseason a few years ago boom I mean come on and that's he kicked that ball right so he ran the full length of the field and then absolutely laid him out that is the kind of play you want to see coming from a guy who's about to potentially according to Kyle Madson could be the guy kicking the ball this season that would be fantastic of course he's got he's Australian born he's got that background growing up playing sports like soccer and rugby super athlete and you know when he's punting the ball nobody really sees how athletic he is although he's a fantastic punter of the ball in my op in my humble opinion uh if the guy can tackle like that on a regular basis my goodness it makes a whole lot of sense to to not have a mismatch in that position where if they break through that line you're kind of out of it it'll also be interesting to see once the ball does hit how many guys step back and try to provide depth and and a layer of support behind there that'll be so fun to watch and it'll it'll be interesting to see too like how clearly defined all of this is is it is every team going to like act basically the same or is it going to look super different from one team to the next will there be lots of extra little strategies I'm really looking forward to checking it out it's going to be a lot of fun to watch this season and I think that the 49ers with wishnowski have a little bit of an advantage there if he ends up being their kicker because of his tackling ability and the fact that again he can kick the ball consistently so I'd like to see that happen we'll see what happens though let me know what you think in the comments as always what a time to be alive

Channel: Sports Talk San Francisco

Views: 5,511

Keywords: 49ers, 49ers football, 49ers news, 49ers rumors, 49ers trade, 49ers roster, 49ers injury report, 49ers mvp, san francisco 49ers, san francisco 49ers news, san francisco 49ers rumors, san francisco 49ers roster, NFL, NFL updates, NFL rumors, 49ers free agency, 49ers NFL draft, san francisco 49ers nfl draft, kyle shanahan, john lynch, FTTB, 49ersfaithful, Faithful to the bay

Id: XXjpPPg0wzU

Length: 13min 14sec (794 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 16 2024