I think the key motivator is that there's about one guy a year, on average, that gets paralyzed on a kick return (we had one about 2-3 yrs ago) which has got to be a major workers comp and lawsuit liability. Less kickoff returns mean less chance of downfield collisions. As I've said before, football could improve the equipment considerably if they didn't mind the expense and the less-violent way the players would probably look but, instead, the NFL would rather risk somebody spending their life in a wheelchair than make the uniforms safer.
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