In the wake of a massive change to the NFL’s kickoff rule, the Steelers are turning to Cordarrelle Patterson for a little extra help next season.
The return man agreed to a two-year, $6 million deal with the Steelers shortly after NFL owners voted to overhaul the league’s kickoff rule, ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported.
Patterson is the NFL’s all-time leader in kick return touchdowns with nine over the course of his career since he made it to the league in 2013 and that number is three times as many as any other player in that timespan.
The 33-year-old heads to the Steel City already with some familiarity with offensive coordinator Arthur Smith, who was the head coach with Atlanta for all three seasons Patterson was there.
Patterson had been pushed into a reduced role with the Falcons, who he played for from 2021 through last season, and now looks to boost the Steelers’ struggling return game in 2024.
The Steelers have not had a kick returned for a touchdown since the 2017 season against the Browns when JuJu Smith-Schuster went 96 yards for a score.
Kick returns will be under the spotlight this upcoming season after the NFL changed them in order to mimic the approach the XFL had put in place when it relaunched in 2020.
The new rule will go into effect this season and fans will see 10 players on the kicking team line up at the receiving team’s 40-yard line and the receiving team will have at least nine players lineup on their own 35-yard line.
The kicker will kick the ball from his own 35-yard line and the kick must land somewhere in between the 20-yard line and the goal line.
A touchback will be spotted at the 30-yard line and a kick that falls short of the 20 will be placed at the receiving team’s 40-yard line.
“This is going to be brand new to everybody,” New Orleans Saints special teams coordinator Darren Rizzi told reporters in Orlando, per ESPN. “But the big thing is we feel we’ve made this play extremely relevant and, more importantly, a lot safer.”
The rule change is expected to help bring injuries down and increase kick returns, which had been at a historically low rate in 2023.
