An interesting proposal — inspired by secondary professional spring leagues — dealing with onside kicks was also submitted by the Eagles, but was tabled in Phoenix. Philadelphia proposed to create a fourth-and-20 alternative to an onside kick, a down played from a team’s own territory with the chance to retain possession instead of attempting an increasingly unlikely onside kick.

McKay explained Tuesday why the committee tabled the proposal.

“OK, so I’ll go to the onside kick alternative, which is fourth-and-20 proposed by Philly. You know, as a committee, it did not have a lot of support,” McKay said. “I happen to be one of those that does support the discussion of it. We did a lot of, in the report, there’s some analytics behind it, and we tried to show the analytics. But I’d say overall, there’s just not an appetite yet to have the onside go away.

“I think what people would rather talk about is alternatives to trying to get the rate of recovery up. Historically, we’ve tried to live in that 13%, you know, 14% range. We don’t want to go higher than that because, you know, you don’t want to award the team that’s behind. But that has been a target of ours and the number, this year, was down to 4%. Lowest ever, and that generated Philly’s proposal.

“I would say there’s some other things to talk about to try to make it, to get the success rate up. Limiting players in the set-up zone, but for now, the play will be as it is, as it was last year.”

The NFL continues to push for innovation and changes in its rulebook, especially when it benefits the league’s persistent effort to improve player safety. As it stands now, the 2023 season won’t include much in the way of change. That could change in May.