Trump’s midterm rally in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday briefly turned into a complaint about one of American football’s most-discussed rule changes.

“Who the hell wants to watch football? It’s boring as hell. And I hate, I hate, that new kickoff rule where you hit the ball and the people are standing there like a bunch of idiots,” he told the crowd.

He said he deliberately avoids the opening minutes: “I can’t watch. You know what I do? I start the game about two minutes in. I don’t want to watch the kickoff.”

What the rule actually does

The dynamic kickoff was adapted from an XFL experiment and introduced for the 2024 NFL season. The kicker stands at the 35-yard line; ten of his teammates line up at the receiving team’s 40. Neither side can move until the ball lands in a designated zone or is touched by a returner.

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NFL owners made the format a permanent rule at their Annual League Meeting in spring 2025, also shifting the touchback spot to the 35-yard line. The push was built on safety data from the trial year, when the kickoff concussion rate fell 43% against the 2021-2023 average.

Toub’s ‘no idea’ line remains the loudest NFL rebuttal

The league office has not publicly responded to the Dubuque remarks. The most pointed answer to Trump’s running criticism of the rule still comes from Kansas City Chiefs assistant head coach and special teams coordinator Dave Toub, who addressed it at a press conference in November 2025 after Trump attacked the format on The Pat McAfee Show.

“He doesn’t even know what he’s looking at. He has no idea what’s going on with the kickoff rule,” Toub told reporters.

“So take that for what it’s worth. And I hope he hears it.”

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Toub has run Kansas City’s special teams since 2013 and is one of the longest-serving coaches in the league on kickoff play.

A pattern of attacks, no rule review

Sunday was at least Trump’s third public swipe at the format in roughly 13 months. In September 2025 he called it “ridiculous-looking” and “sissy” football on Truth Social; he returned to it a few weeks later on The Pat McAfee Show.

The NFL’s competition committee has not placed the dynamic kickoff back on the agenda for 2026, and no public league response to the Dubuque remarks has followed.

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