JACKSONVILLE – He has prepare and planned as much as possible.
Now, it gets real – which Heath Farwell said means everything changes when it comes to the NFL's new "Dynamic Kickoff" rule.
"The regular season is going to be completely different," he said.
Farwell, entering his third season as the Jaguars' special teams coordinator, has spent the offseason and preseason focused on a new kickoff rule designed to increase kickoff returns while keeping the play safe. It made its debut in the 2024 preseason.
Farwell said what happened the past three weeks is fine. It just might not mean much when the Jaguars visit the Miami Dolphins at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla., in the September 8 2024 regular-season opener.
"Every team is going to have a lot of wrinkles that they've held back, as well as us," Farwell said.
The Jaguars in three preseason games led the NFL averaging 34.67 yards on six kickoff returns. Their 24.93 yards allowed on 14 returns was the 11th-lowest in the league.
"We worked really, really hard all offseason with studying, getting feedback from players, just actually doing trial-and-error type stuff," Farwell said. "Then obviously, getting it into the preseason and seeing what it looks like on a real game and real live, full-speed action. You get more tests out of it and more knowledge to it.
"I'd say we did a pretty good job, what we could learn from it. I think it's a great sign, but it doesn't mean any factors necessarily of where we're headed come this week, really."
Kicks now will be from the kicking team's 35-yard-line, with the 10 non-kickers on the kicking team lining up on the receiving team's 40-yard line. Nine players from the receiving team must line up in a "set up area" between the receiving team's 35- and 30-yard lines. There also now will be a "landing zone" for kicks between the 20-yard line and goal line.
"The schemes are different, some of the concepts are different, but we're still using the same techniques that we've always used," Farwell said. "What we believe in as a philosophy on kick return and kickoff, we're still using those same terms and techniques. We're still trying to do a lot of the same stuff. Now, we have to tweak some different stuff with it, but for the most part, it's kind of what I thought.
"We're going to have a lot more tests coming up in the next four weeks. There's going to be some unknowns. How do we handle those things, and how do we adjust to those things, because there's a lot of unknowns.
"So, we're learning as we go across the league, just like everybody else is doing. Everyone's doing the exact same thing. So, yeah, I think we're going to learn so much every week."
NOTABLE
- Farwell on Thursday praised rookie Cam Little, who has been consistent while showing impressive leg strength since securing the kicker position early in training camp. Little, a sixth-round selection in the 2024 NFL Draft, converted six of seven field goals in the preseason with his lone miss from 62 yards in a Preseason Week 1 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs at EverBank Stadium. "The thing about Cam, nothing wavers," Farwell said. "It hasn't since the moment we drafted him. The funny thing, you look back at that preseason, the first kick we sent him out there is a 62-yarder. We didn't even think twice about it. We just said, 'Yeah, go for it.' He wanted it. Let's see what it looks like. He unfortunately missed it, but he hadn't wavered since then. We haven't seen any different from him. Confidence with him in himself is tremendous and we have just as much or more in him." Harwell also expressed confidence in Little's ability to place kickoffs under the new rules, saying Little has "great command for it. He has great control; the ability to go, directionally, in both directions; as well as sprinkling some of these other alternative kicks; as well as bomb them out the back of the end zone on command pretty well. Those are the things he does all the time and (we're) very confident where he's at."
