The last time the Broncos returned a kickoff for a touchdown feels like ancient history. Trindon Holliday, a 5-foot-5 mighty mite, ran 105 yards through a crowd of head-hunting Philadelphia Eagles defenders from deep in his end zone to the other coast in 2013. There were, amazingly, two kickoff returns longer than Holliday’s that season, a 109-yarder and another for 108.

Fans may never see it again.

If the NFL has its way, the return will go the way of leather helmets and a coach’s fedora, a relic of a long-ago game. Safety is the goal. Kickoffs are among the most dangerous plays in football, with two groups of 11 large men running full speed at each other, many of them young players trying to make a big hit to make a big impression on their coaches. So the NFL, for the second time in five years, tweaked its return rules.

But instead of eliminating the kickoff altogether, the NFL is trying to nudge teams into doing it themselves. And the idea is backfiring.

The NFL’s new kickoff rule — which moved touchbacks from the 20-yard line to the 25-yard line — is having the opposite effect of the league’s intended impact. Instead of kick returners staying in the end zone for a touchback, knowing the difficulty of getting a 25-yard return, early preseason games show kicking teams are not giving the returners a choice. Kickers are using a higher, shorter “mortar kick” that lands inside the 10-yard line and forces a return.

Through two weeks of preseason games, the number of kickoff returns has spiked. Last season, teams returned 2.11 kickoffs per game during the regular season. Through two weeks of the exhibition season, teams are returning an average of 2.83 per game — a difference that, if it holds up, would lead to about 370 more returns this season.

“You’ve seen a lot more returns this year, for sure,” Broncos special-teams coordinator Joe DeCamillis said. “It’s still in the experimentation process, but I know one thing: I’ve seen a lot of balls that are inside the 20 right now — a lot. They’re kicked outside the numbers and even deeper or in the middle of the field.”

The problem is, the NFL put the carrot in front of the wrong donkey. The league gave the returner an incentive to down the ball in the end zone, giving him 5 extra yards for not doing anything. But they took away a reason for a kicker to blast the ball deep into the end zone. Teams don’t want to give up that extra 5 yards.

After all, only one team a season ago, the Kansas City Chiefs, averaged a starting field position after a kickoff beyond the 25-yard line, at 25.14. Eight teams started inside the 21-yard line on average after a kickoff. The worst team at returning kicks, the Tennessee Titans, started on average at the 19.65. Other than Kansas City, there are 31 teams that would gladly accept a touchback and take those 5 extra yards.

So kickers, in turn, won’t let them.

“I was very adamant about it when they changed the rule,” Broncos kicker Brandon McManus said. “I’m all for player safety. But this rule will have the complete opposite effect of what they want. As much as coaches want to look out for player safety too, they also don’t want to give up field position, even an extra 5 yards. The NFL is based on field position and percentages of scoring, depending on where you start the ball. I’m not surprised at all.”

The NFL started this process five years ago when it changed the kickoff position from the 30-yard line to the 35 so kickers could more easily kick the ball into the end zone. It worked. Returns fell from 80.1 percent to 53.3 percent in the first year and have dropped ever since. Last year only 41.1 percent of kicks were returned. Through two preseason games, that number has skyrocketed to 67 percent, according to NFL.com.

The regular-season trend might reverse this season. The kicking team is closer to the returner, and the benefit of nailing the ball into the end zone was taken away.

“You’re not going to catch the ball and get hit right away. They still can’t get down the field that fast,” Broncos returner Jordan Norwood said. “But the blockers will need to get back and turn around quicker. It’s more of a scheme thing now.”

The NFL adopted the new touchback rule on a trial basis. The league will experiment for one season, it said, before deciding on a long-term rule. McManus, the Broncos representative to the players’ union, has another suggestion.

“The new rule doesn’t give the kickoff team any merit to do anything,” McManus said. “What I’d say is, if a guy can kick it out of the back of the end zone, the ball should go to the 20. But if you kick it in the end zone and they take a knee, it can go to the 25. You have to give both teams a reason to abide by the new rule.

“Everybody cares about player safety, but at the end of the day, it comes down to wins and losses, and teams don’t want to give up those extra yards.”

Rule bending

The NFL’s new touchback rule — putting the ball at the 25 instead of the 20 — might be backfiring. The rule is intended to encourage player safety by cutting back on kickoff returns. But the numbers are going in the opposite direction.