Las Vegas Raiders kicker Daniel Carlson isn’t sure how the NFL’s new kickoff rules will affect the return game, but he hopes to be ready if he must make the tackle.

“I just got some extra bicep curls in there during our jail-yard workout over there at the high school gym,” Carlson said at the Raiders’ training camp in Costa Mesa, California, “so, I mean, hey, I play football, too, and, luckily, I’m a pretty big guy — 6-5. …

“But, yeah, we got to work it a little more. It might happen a little more than usual. I mean, nobody really knows what this kickoff, kickoff return is going to look like, so we’re eager to see it in live action and in the preseason games and find out kind of what it is.”

The former Auburn standout said he took “a couple reps at the end of practice” on tackling.

“It’s something that, unfortunately, I’ve had to do a couple times throughout my career,” Carlson said. “Hopefully, I’m not the one making the play very often. You know, it’s usually not a good sign. But just with the new kickoff rule, there’s definitely a greater possibility I’m going to be in certain plays possibly. And there’s different things we can do scheme-wise to, hopefully, avoid that some. But if I’ve got to make the play, I’ve got to make the play. And, like I said, just continuing to work that and get better at that.”

Las Vegas punter AJ Cole disputed Carlson had worked on tackling.

“He must be in his room late at night,” Cole joked. “He’s got some pillows set up on his bed, and he’s, like, jumping on the bed like a little kid and rolling over it. But I’ve seen no tackling drills, so that’s fiction. You guys are out of practice. Have you seen him tackling?”

In 2024, NFL kickers will continue to launch kickoffs from their 35-yard line. But their teammates won’t be lined up with them. The other kicking-team players will line up with one foot on the receiving team’s 40-yard line.

The receiving team will have at least nine players deployed between its 35- and 30-yard line. Seven must have a foot on the 35.

No one on the opposing lines of players can move until the football is touched by a returner or hits the ground.

The kick must reach the receiving team’s 20-yard line. If it doesn’t, it’s treated as an out-of-bounds kickoff, with possession starting at the receiving team’s 40-yard line.

Kickoffs that come down between the 20 and the goal line must be returned. Touchbacks still exist, with possession starting at the receiving team’s 30-yard line.

“It’s definitely different,” Carlson said. “It’s not something you kind of think you’re going to have to do at this point in your career where all of a sudden there’s new rules. And just last week they changed the rule that — something that I was working on all season. All of a sudden you can’t do, so we’re learning on the fly, and you’re kind of having to be creative about it. And each week I feel like we’re going to see different teams doing different things. And just like offenses and defenses are doing, you’re adapting different game plans sometimes when you see something that works well.”

The late rule change concerned the football’s position on the tee.

“You can’t lay the ball flat on the tee anymore,” Carlson said, “so it has to be vertical on the tee. It has to be kind of in the cup. They’re making different rules as we go. Kind of we’re figuring out different loopholes, and they’re trying to make some different rules. But at the end of the day, we’re going to see what it looks like in preseason. And, I mean, you’ve got to adapt as you go. This is first season doing this, so we’ll see how it goes.”

The new rules were intended to increase kickoff returns while eliminating the high-speed impacts that made the play an injury minefield.

The first three preseason games – two low-scoring and one shortened by bad weather – produced 17 kickoff returns. The average NFL game in 2023 had 2.1 kickoff returns.

The NFL has referred to its new kickoff rules as “dynamic,” but the average return in the preseason so far as been 23.8 yards. During the 2023 season, the average kickoff return covered 23.0 yards.

“Different teams are going to do different things,” Carlson said. “And there’s always going to be one or two things that are, you know, someone keeps a secret until probably Game No. 1, so we’re kind of scouting it out, and everybody else across the league is doing the same. But eventually you’re going to have to show whatever secrets you might think you have. But I think at this point all the kickers probably have tried just about everything.”

While testing kicks for different kickoff strategies, Carlson has been wary of throwing off his field-goal swing. Since the start of the 2019 season, only Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker has scored more NFL points than Carlson. Tucker has been a Pro Bowl selection in each of those five seasons and the first-team All-Pro kicker twice. Carlson has not been a Pro Bowler, but he was the All-Pro kicker for 2022.

“That’s one thing I was concerned early on was I don’t want to create bad habits that essentially trickle into my field-goal kicking where I’m hitting line-drive field goals all of a sudden,” Carlson said. “But I’ve always done kickoffs, and kickoffs were slightly different than field goals anyways, so it is about compartmentalizing, and every other kicker is dealing with it too, so you just got to learn how to adapt.”

Carlson will get his first opportunity to see the new rules in action on Saturday, when the Raiders open their preseason schedule against the Minnesota Vikings at 3 p.m. CDT at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. NFL Network will televise the game.

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Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @AMarkG1.