NFL’s new K-BALL is IMPACTING scoring

NFL’s new K-BALL is IMPACTING scoring

Here’s Brody Brazil. Quick shout out for the voicemail line. I’m sure you already know the number 8334 Brody. But this reminder, if you’ve got a question or a comment or any kind of contribution for this YouTube channel, I would love to hear it. I literally listen to every single message and then I get to play back and respond to the very best ones. Hi Brody, this is uh Sean from Toronto. Uh I’ve been watching your show on YouTube. It’s a great show. You’re a very insightful shows and and very knowledgeable. Thank you. Uh question for you. I’ve been watching a lot of NFL highlights this year, especially last year. And one thing I’ve noticed, which is odd, if you ever go back and watch highlights of this year’s game so far and last year, you’ll realize that if you look the ball that they use in play, you know, when they’re either throwing it or running it, it’s a dark ball. It’s a dark colored ball. Whereas, as soon as a kicker from any team will attempt a field goal, take a look at the ball. It’s light brown, looking like the balls from years gone by. Now, I’ve noticed that a lot of kickers have been hitting 60 yard plus field goals lately, and I wonder if it has anything to do with maybe a different ball they’re using for the kickers to attempt field goals, because at this rate, we might have like an 80 yard field goal by the end of the decade, right? Uh that’s basically what I wanted to ask you. Enjoy your show. Keep up the good work. And uh thank you for taking my question. Sean, thank you very much for the call. I am about to confirm your observations. Now, I can’t speak to last season’s NFL footballs, but I do want to tell you about this year, 2025’s brand new Kball rules. What are we talking about here? The balls that they actually use for kicking, not the one that the quarterback’s going to snap from under center. I’m talking about footballs that are specifically used for kickers and punters in all of those different situations. Now, we actually have to take this back to 1999. And that was the first year that the NFL set aside specific footballs just for kicking purposes. But from 1999 to last year, 2024, these specific footballs were separated and isolated, and they literally have the letter K on them to designate there for kicking only. But these footballs were only made available to team players and representatives and equipment people only about 90 minutes before game time. So the balls would be on site. The teams would get a look at them. They’d get to brush them up. They’d get to prepare those kicking footballs, but they didn’t have them for several hours really or days prior to the actual game. Here in 2025, there’s a brand new NFL rule. And that might be the color of the football difference. You’re noticing the distance of kickers being able to nail field goals this year versus other seasons prior. Yeah. Why are we seeing like a 70der that was nailed in preeason? and and how about some 60 yard kicks these days during regular season games that go an extra 10 uh uh across the across the crossbar. So, we are seeing farther kicks. All of this makes sense, but you have to understand what’s going on here. You can still only use even though the teams have these footballs well in advance, I’ll get to when they were even delivered. You can still only use water or approved Wilson brand brushes and tacky sponges. So, the rules don’t really change. You can’t do up the football any different. It’s just that you have more time to do it. And the kickers get to practice with these footballs all week long. Three of them per game that they’ll bring to the actual Sunday game day or Monday night game or Thursday night football game. You can’t submerge the football still. You can’t apply extreme heat to it. You can’t freeze the football. I don’t want to dive too deep into the weeds of all the things you can and can’t do, but the bottom line is there are still some major guidelines about what can happen to these three footballs that you bring. There’s also the fact that these footballs, the three kicking footballs, K balls per team, they still get inspected by the officials before game time. So, nothing sneaky, nothing’s getting past anybody here. It’s just that they get more time to manipulate the football to each kicker’s specific liking. And again, Kballs can’t be used for more than three games total. So, hypothetically, if Brandon Aubrey had one football for the Dallas Cowboys that he loved kicking all season long, that’s too bad. You only get, and these footballs are labeled and microchipped. You only get three games with that specific football. Want to go back to some more information from Pro Football Talk. This is when the new rules took place and people were curious about how this would go. So, the Kballs have actually been delivered to the teams long ago, like during their training camps. Wilson Sporting Goods has delivered now 60 kicking footballs directly to each club for the season, 60 at one time. The K balls will be branded with a special K and numbered 1 through 60, so tracked and traced and all that. These footballs are identical to the game footballs used on non-kicking downs and will be used exclusively for kickoff, safety kicks, punts, field goal attempts, and extra point kicks during the game. So, remember when I said these teams only used to get the footballs 60 to 90 minutes before actual kickoff? Now, they’ve had them for weeks and months to prepare the footballs how they want. And because of that, here’s the main point. Like we can talk about the color and the appearance of the football looking different. Maybe even the the shape of it. Do they squeeze the football? Do they make it uh more of a round shape? Is that easier to kick? Kickers get to practice with these K balls, the identical ones during the week. So the same football you’ll be see see uh you’ll see being used on a Sunday is the one that they’re practicing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday with the footballs now manipulated with more time are said to be less slick, right? So they get more time to really make it a a mat and a and a griable texture, but also an expanded sweet spot on the football. just a bigger overall area so that you don’t have to be so precise with your kick. We’ve talked about distance. How about accuracy? I wonder if that has also gone up too. Just kickers being comfortable with these footballs. And I guess we’re mostly talking about field goals and extra points here, but I wonder if punt distances have also gone up too. Pro Football Talk says that these new rules could potentially have universally added 5 to seven yards of range per NFL kicker. And one example is Cam Little of Jacksonville, who by the way might be on my fantasy team this year. Might be doing quite well. Might have actually been somebody I didn’t draft but picked up shortly after on the waiverwire. But I digress. Cam Little hit that 70ard field goal in a 2025 preseason game. And we have yet to see a 66-y in a regular season game, but we have seen several 60 plus yard kicks made so far this year. All of those k I shouldn’t say all, many of those kicks seemed to have the ability to get up to 70 or so yards if they needed to be like they had the distance. Uh they got through the field goal post with plenty of room to spare. So what’s going on here? It could be as simple as this. Kickers have more time with these special footballs to prepare them upright, to do them up special. And what does all this get back to? Increased scoring potential of the NFL. It’s something they obviously want. It’s something they’re aiming for. Is it cheating? Not really. You’re just getting more time with the football and they still have to be approved. And there are still rules and guidelines which I don’t suspect and I’m not going to accuse anybody of of using a different brush than the Wilson brush or uh putting high heat on the football which are not allowed to do. There are still some major rules and guidelines, but we’re seeing we’re seeing the effect of these rules and these footballs held in advance. Now, all of a sudden, they’re making a difference on NFL gameplay. And to the point of this call, they look maybe they look different with a different color. I haven’t noticed that, but I have noticed that kickers, they’ve got a lot more range now than they ever did before. So, let me know what you think about all this in the comments section below. Good thing for football, bad thing for football? Do you actually care? Does it seem right? Are we setting ourselves up for a controversy somewhere down the road of something somebody did to a football before bringing it to the game? Uh, let me know what you think in the comments. Also, thumbs up down there helps me this video and this channel. And don’t forget to subscribe. I would love to see you back here next time.

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“NFL K ball” refers to the specially prepared footballs used exclusively for kicking plays like kickoffs, punts, and field goals. Introduced in 1999 to standardize kicking balls and prevent teams from manipulating them, the rules have recently changed again to allow teams to prepare them in advance of game day, a change that many believe has contributed to the increase in long-distance field goals.

So from 1999 to 2024, a kicker’s field goal range could differ from the week of practice to game day, because the game footballs were not consistent with what the kickers were using in practice. Because of the rush to prepare the footballs pregame and allow time for the officiating crew to inspect them, the special teams coach said kickers sometimes didn’t even see the football until they kicked it off.

And the compressed timeframe didn’t allow clubs to spend equal time conditioning each of their three allowed K-balls, so if the first football was kicked into the stands on a field goal or point-after try, or had to be replaced in bad weather, and Balls 2 and 3 weren’t as worked up, it created a disadvantage. The coordinator and another special teams coach told ESPN that the condition of the K-ball is so important that losing the first two could even shrink a team’s field goal range within a game.

Read More: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46452926/nfl-kicking-balls-2025-rule-changes-field-goal-records-competition-committee

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