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The NFL was already planning to explore the onside kick before Dan Campbell made a regrettable decision to try one at an unusual time.
Detroit’s ultra-aggressive coach called for an onside kick with the Lions trailing the Bills by 10 points and 12 minutes remaining. Buffalo’s Mack Hollins recovered the kick, ran it back to the 5 and the Bills scored on the next play on their way to a 48-42 victory Sunday in a potential Super Bowl preview.
Bringing back surprise onside kicks would benefit coaches like Campbell, who aren’t afraid to take risks. Nobody likes to gamble more than Campbell, who isn’t shy about going for it on fourth down no matter the situation.
Campbell attempted this onside kick out of desperation. Detroit’s injury-riddled defense couldn’t stop Josh Allen and the Bills. Buffalo had five touchdowns, one field goal and one missed field goal in its first nine possessions when the Lions tried the onside kick.
“I thought we’d get that ball,” Campbell said. “I wish I hadn’t done it.”
The Bills knew it was coming because teams must declare an onside kick and can only try it in the fourth quarter under the league’s overhauled kickoff rules. The element of surprise — the Saints once executed an onside kick to start the second half in a Super Bowl — has been eliminated this season due to the new rules, which further reduced the success rate.
Executing successful onside kicks began to decline in 2018 when the NFL banned running starts on kickoffs. The success rate was cut in half to 8.6% since that change.
Entering Week 15, only 3 of 41 (7.3%) onside kicks were recovered.
NFL executive Troy Vincent said last week the competition committee has to consider options to revive the onside kick because it has become “a dead play.” The league made dynamic changes to the kickoff rules in the offseason to bring back returns. That has worked at the expense of the onside kick.
“I think all has to be on the table,” Vincent said. “When we adjusted the kickoff five, six years ago, that also (impacted) the onside kick. You used to have overload, attack blocks, trap blocks that occurred on that play, which was a pretty dangerous play. You can set people up for failures is what we would say.
“I think you have to look at all aspects. You should be able to do that in any quarter. It’s not a surprise onside kick. I think all of those things have to come back to the table. We should explore. Our effort should be to make every single play a competitive play and that includes that play whether it’s first quarter or fourth quarter.”
Perhaps the best option would be giving a team an opportunity to run one play to gain a certain number of yards to keep possession. Because it’ll be difficult to revise the onside kick without changing the overall formation all kickoffs, this radical idea may be the best solution.
The Eagles proposed an onside kick alternative that would’ve let teams try a fourth-and-20 from their own 20. Club owners rejected it in a vote during the league’s annual spring meetings.
“It has garnered (more votes from) where we started and the votes that it received and where it ended a year ago,” Vincent said. “There has been progress, but those are all the things that we should be exploring. We have to be creative. And I think our coaches, they can be creative enough to come up with a good solid, competitive play to bring some excitement back in those situations.”
There’s no telling how many onside kicks someone like Campbell would try if the element of surprise returned. The fourth-and-long alternative won’t be a surprise but it’s a better option than the current onside kick.
The reason Campbell even tried the onside kick early in the fourth quarter is a major problem for Detroit, which had its 11-game winning streak snapped. The depleted Lions (12-2) lost defensive tackle Alim McNeill and cornerback Carlton Davis III to potential season-ending injuries. They’re already missing star edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson and have more players on injured reserve than any other team.
“I’m not buying it, I don’t,” Campbell said about the injuries possibly catching up to the defense. “We can be better. We should’ve been better. We know how good they are but that team was more urgent than us.”
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Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell, bottom, reacts next to quarterback Jared Goff during the second half of an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Rey Del Rio)
Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell speaks at a news conference after an NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Duane Burleson)
Palestinian health officials said Monday the death toll from the Israel-Hamas war, now in its 14th month, topped 45,000 people.
This comes as 52 dead arrived at hospitals across the bombed-out strip over the past 24 hours, including a family of four, in Gaza City overnight, according to Palestinian medics.
The Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7 last year when Hamas militants stormed southern Israel, killing some 1, 200 people and taking another 250 hostage. Israel responded with heavy bombardment and a ground incursion into the Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, a UK-based war monitor says Israeli airstrikes early Monday hit missile warehouses in Syria and called it the “most violent strikes” since 2012.
Israel has been pounding what it says are military sites in Syria after the dramatic collapse of President Bashar Assad’s rule, wiping out air defenses and most of the arsenal of the former Syrian army. Israeli troops have also seized a border buffer zone, sparking condemnation, with critics accusing Israel of violating the 1974 ceasefire and possibly exploiting the chaos in Syria for a land grab.
The Assad family’s rule, which lasted more than half a century, collapsed just over a week ago following a stunning rebel advance.
The new Syrian administration, led by the former insurgents who toppled Assad, has complained to the U.N. Security Council about the Israeli bombardment and incursions into Syrian territory in the Golan Heights. However, it has also said it does not want a military confrontation with Israel.
Here is the latest:
Health officials in the Gaza Strip say the death toll from the 14-month war between Israel and Hamas militants has reached 45,028 people.
The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. It said more than half of the fatalities were women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
The Health Ministry also said 106,962 have been wounded since the start of the war.
ANKARA, Turkey — A Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said Monday the decision marked a “new stage in Israel’s goal of expanding its borders through occupation,” adding that Ankara was concerned that the move would harm efforts to establish peace and stability in Syria.
“The international community must show the necessary reaction to Israel and ensure that the illegal activities of (Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s government come to an end,” the statement read.
Qatar also condemned the decision, calling it “a new episode in a series of Israeli aggressions on Syrian territories and a blatant violation of international law.”
The Israeli government approved Netanyahu’s plan on Sunday with the aim to encourage population growth in the area.
Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it, though the international community except for the U.S. regards it as occupied. Israeli figures show the remote territory is home to about 50,000 people, about half of them Jewish Israelis and the other half Arab Druze, many of whom still consider themselves Syrians.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — In central Gaza’s Nuseirat urban refugee camp, mourners carried Monday the body of Ahmad Baker Al-Louh, 39, a Palestinian journalist working for Al Jazeera, from the hospital through the streets. His blue bulletproof vest rested atop him.
Al-Louh was killed the day before in a strike on a point for Gaza’s civil defense agency and Al Jazeera said had been covering rescue operations of a family wounded in an earlier bombing when he was killed.
Sunday’s strike also killed three civil defense workers, including the local head of the agency, according to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. The civil defense is Gaza’s main rescue agency and operates under the Hamas-run government.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The 10 included a family of four, Palestinian medics said Monday, as the Israel-Hamas war raged on for the 14th month in the Gaza Strip.
The strike late Sunday hit a house in Gaza City’s eastern Shijaiyah neighborhood, according to the Health Ministry’s ambulance and emergency service. Rescuers recovered the bodies of 10 people from under the rubble, including those of two parents and their two children, it said.
DAMASCUS, Syria — The U.S. embassy in Damascus advised Americans to leave Syria, saying the security situation there continues to be volatile and unpredictable with armed conflict and “terrorism throughout the country."
The embassy, which has been closed since 2012, posted a statement on X, warning U.S. citizens who were unable to leave the country to prepare “contingency plans for emergency situations.” It didn't give further details.
The statement also said that the U.S. government is unable to provide any routine or emergency consular services to U.S. citizens and those who need “emergency assistance to depart should contact the U.S. Embassy in the country they plan to enter.”
Sleeper cells of the Islamic State group have claimed responsibility for deadly attacks over the past months in different parts of Syria. Despite their defeat in March 2019, the extremists still pose a threat in the war-torn country.
DAMASCUS, Syria — The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, reported early Monday that Israeli airstrikes pounded missile warehouses and other former Syrian army sites along Syria’s coast in the “most violent strikes in the Syrian coast region since the beginning of the (Israeli) strikes in 2012.”
The Israeli military declined to comment on the strikes.
The observatory said that “violent explosions” were heard in the coastal city of Tartous “as a result of the successive strikes and the flying of ground-to-ground missiles from the warehouses.”
FILE - Israeli soldiers cross the security fence moving towards the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights from Syria, in the town of Majdal Shams, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File )
An Israeli bulldozer maneuvers on the buffer zone near the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights from Syria, viewed from the town of Majdal Shams, Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
An Israeli armoured vehicle crosses the security fence moving towards the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights from Syria, in the town of Majdal Shams, Sunday, Dec. 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
