In only the second game of the 2026 UFL season, a new rule was already tested. D.C. Defenders kicker Matt Crane kicked the league's first 4-point field goal. This season, the league is taking a page out of fantasy football scoring systems and implementing a new rule in which field goals of 60 yards or longer are worth 4 points instead of the normal 3.

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DC Defenders' kicker Matt Crane was the first to convert a 60-yard 4-point field goal in the UFL.

The idea is that a longer field goal is much harder to make, and therefore it should be worth more points. OK, well scoring a touchdown from further away is also significantly harder, so why aren't teams awarded with extra points for 50-yard touchdown plays?

I do not like this 4-point field goal rule. I do not like that the rules are codifying an explicit reward for being further away from the goal. In my opinion, this goes against the spirit of the game, in which the goal is supposed to be to drive as close to the goal as possible, and hopefully cross the goal line. Getting more points for being further away from the goal should not, in my opinion, be in the rules.

A counter-argument would be that there are already situations in which teams chose to be further from the end zone in order to get better results. I can think of 2 common examples off the top of my head.

The first is a series of QB kneel downs to run out the clock. A team chooses to take a small loss because, in that situation, the second on the clock are more valuable than a few feet of field position.

Another common example is a team deliberately taking a Delay of Game penalty for a punt on the opponent's side of the 50. This is done to give the punter more room to land the punt inside the 10 yard line without as much risk of putting the ball into the endzone for a touchback.

I don't have a problem with either of these scenarios.

The core difference is that in the examples of the QB kneel and punt, the teams are making a strategic decision to give up short-term field position in exchange for an indirect long-term benefit. These scenarios are not codified in the actual rules. But in the case of the 4-point field goal, it is the rules giving an explicit and immediate reward for losing field position. I could be forgetting some edge case, but I suspect that in most (if not all) examples that you can find of a football team giving up field position in exchange for some benefit, the benefit is not explicitly granted by the rules.

To be more specific, the 4-point field goal rule is more analogous to a touchback rule that says "a punt kicked from the 50 yard line or further that crosses the goal line shall result in a Touchback of only 10 yards instead of 20 yards."

The UFL hasn't even started yet, but It's already proving to be a disappointment. The recently-merged XFL and USFL announced some of its rules recently, which give an insight into how the league's managers are approaching the sport. And it isn't good.

Easily the single best idea that the XFL implemented was its lower-risk kickoff rules. This rule lined the kickoff coverage team at the receiving team's 35 and the kick return team at their own 30 -- only 5 yards apart from each other. The only 2 players not lined up on these yard markers are the kicker (who kicks the ball from his own 30), and the returner (who lines up around his own 10). No return blocker or coverage player may move until the ball has been fielded by the returner or has bounced no the ground. This rule put all of the players only a few yards apart from each other, instead of staggering the blockers across the half the length of the field. This eliminates the high speed collisions that resulted from coverage players running into blockers or the returner at a full sprint, and was expected to dramatically reduce major kickoff injuries (the kickoff being one of the most dangerous plays in all of football).

There has been talk over the years of eliminating kickoffs from football entirely, because of the danger inherent to the high speeds on the play. But the XFL rule provided perhaps the best opportunity to save the kickoff. It was such a smart idea, that both the NCAA and the NFL have considered adopting the XFL's kickoff. Neither has done so yet, but they should. If kickoffs are going to stay in football, I think this is how it will be done.

The XFL's old kickoff rule should be the standard for all football leagues -- but apparently not the UFL.

But the UFL apparently doesn't think so, as the UFL's rules managers are apparently opting to ditch the XFL kickoff rule in favor of the traditional, higher-speed, kickoff.

The UFL is claiming that the XFL kickoff did not result in a significant reduction in injuries, but I'm skeptical of that claim. The league only operated for 2 seasons, and teams didn't play more than 10 games in either of those 2 seasons. That's not a whole lot of time to establish long-term trends. It's not like major injuries are happening in NFL kickoffs every single game. It would take years to establish whether the rate of injuries is actually lower than the NFL, or if it is substantially higher than on any other football play from scrimmage.

Other than a flimsy excuse that the XFL kickoffs didn't apparently reduce injuries in the highly limited sample size that was available, the league's head of football operations, Daryl Johnston, said "the stationary kickoff [...] just didn't look like football.". So the XFL rule is at least as safe as the NFL rule, but the UFL provided no justification (that I could find) based on fair competition -- only a superficial preference that the traditional kickoff "looks better".

In fact, the UFL is actually moving the spot of the kick back to the kicking team's 20 yard line (instead of the 35 yard line in the NFL, or the 30 yard line in the XFL). This is their attempt to eliminate touchbacks and force more returns. This means that the UFL's kickoff rule will likely end up being more dangerous than the NFL's kickoff rule because the UFL will have a higher rate of kickoffs being fielded and returned, which means a higher rate of players running into each other at a full sprint and risking major injuries.

The XFL's kickoff, by the way, had more than a 90% return rate. So it also successfully resulted in almost all kickoffs being returned.

If this lack of forward-thinking is going to be common in the rationale that the operators of the UFL are using to create their rules, then I have zero faith in their ability to run a successful football league.