RALEIGH, N.C. --- Earlier this month, the NCAA Football Rules Committee approved a number of new rules for the upcoming season. Most notable and radical among them was a change to the game’s kickoff rules.

The receiving team can now fair catch a kick inside the 25-yard line and have it result in a touchback.

Larry Fedora chairs the NCAA’s Football Rules Committee and thus played a role in the rule changes. On Thursday, at a Rams Club event at Brier Creek Country Club, Larry Fedora spoke to Inside Carolina about the new rule.

“The rule was made for the best interests of the players and their health and safety, trying to create more touchbacks so you don’t have as high of collisions on the kickoff play,” Fedora said. “So you’ve got 11 guys running down the field, 60 yards, full speed and so you are going to have some pretty violent collisions at that point. I think the rule, we’ll have to see at the end of the year how it does and if it provides us with more touchbacks.”

Duke head football coach David Cutcliffe said after his team’s spring game that he was ready to lose the kick off entirely. He was reacting to the new rule, which he said doesn’t go far enough.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Cutcliffe told Steve Wiseman of The News and Observer. “I’m ready, and I’ve been around a long time, I’m ready to lose the kickoff. I get it.”

Fedora wasn’t ready to go that far, but acknowledged the paramount importance of player safety.

“I think that’s probably the next step,” Fedora said. “I think we need to look at this rule and see how it affects the game the next couple of years and look at the data, see if it starts to eliminate some of the injuries that are occurring on the play.”

North Carolina has long relied on special teams to swing the momentum of games in their favor. Ryan Switzer made his name as a punt returner, but UNC’s kick return game under Fedora has been just as potent.

Anthony Ratliff-Williams took a kickoff and ran it back 94 yards for a touchdown against Louisville during the 2017 season. TJ Logan set the UNC record with four career kickoff return touchdowns while playing under Fedora. All of those returns, including a 78-yard return by Logan for a touchdown against Cincinnati in the 2013 Belk Bowl, were game-changing plays. Fedora is not ready to give those plays up.

“I’m really not,” Fedora said. “And it will take some strategy involved in whether or not you will fair catch, or whether you are gonna try to return it. I think a lot of that has to do with what type of return man you have.”

Ratliff-Williams returns as a dynamic kickoff return man next season for the Tar Heels. Only time will tell if the new rule neuters Ratliff-Williams’ impact as a kick returner and if the rule makes the game safer.