This year, the Huskers have received 45 kickoffs (as of Week 8). 10 of those have ended up worse than the 25-yard line, 24 have ended up at the 25-yard line, and the remaining 11 have ended up better than the 25-yard line. Here is the total breakout:

Yard line we ended up after every Kickoff:

[10, 12, 15, 15, 16, 20, 22, 23, 23, 24, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 26, 26, 27, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 45, 47]

Once filtering out the touchbacks and fair catches that were called, there are 19 kickoffs that we attempted to return. 42% were worse than fair catching, and 52% were better than fair catching.

[10, 12, 15, 15, 16, 20, 23, 23, 25, 26, 26, 27, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 45, 47]

Fair catching the kickoff gives your offense the consistency of knowing they will always start with the ball at the 25-yard line at a minimum. Nebraska outperforms fair catching the football just 52% of the time. 16% of these kicks would have had better starting position than the 25-yard line even with no return yards.

Of the 5709 kickoffs that have happened in 2018, 22 touchdowns have been scored. Compare this to the 62 fumbles that have occurred on kickoffs and observe that there is almost 3x as many fumbles as there are touchdowns on kick returns.

Player security is the final reason to fair catch everything inside the 25-yard line. Kick returns are one of the most dangerous plays on the field. The research recently published here (Weibe) shows that between 2013 and 2017, 6% of the plays were kickoffs but 21% of concussions occurred during kickoffs. The study showed that increasing the number of touchbacks reduced the number of concussions from 10.93 per 1000 plays to 2.04 per 1000 plays. This was done by increasing the number of touchbacks from 17.9% to 48% by moving the kickoff line from the 35-yard line to the 40-yard line.