President’s Trump criticism of the new kickoff rule didn’t sit well with Kansas City Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub and he did not hold back in his response to the President.
Toub – who has been a special teams coordinator at the NFL level since the 2004 season – made it clear during his weekly press conference that he doesn’t care what the president thinks about the play.
“He doesn’t even know what he’s looking at. He has no idea what’s going on with the kickoff rule,” Toub said, referencing Trump. “Take that for what it’s worth. And I hope he hears it.”
Toub’s comments come just over a week after Trump referred to the dynamic kickoff as “terrible” during an appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.”
“I hate the kickoff in football. I think it’s so terrible, I think it’s so demeaning. I think it hurts the game and hurts the pageantry,” Trump said.
The NFL instituted the dynamic kickoff for the 2024 NFL season after it was used in the XFL’s 2020 and 2023 seasons. The goal of instituting the new kickoff was to create more return opportunities on kicks while limiting the amount of full-speed collisions that occurred during the old kickoff setup.
The NFL has claimed the dynamic kickoff has, thus far, been safer than the original kickoff while kick return rate rose from a historic low of 21.8% in 2023 to 32.8% in 2024.
