Kansas City Chiefs assistant head coach Dave Toub has brushed off President Trump’s criticisms of recent changes to the NFL’s kickoff rules.
“He doesn’t even know what he’s looking at,” Toub said at a press conference on Thursday, eliciting a laugh from the gathered reporters. “He has no idea what’s going on with the kickoff rule, so I’m going to take that for what it’s worth. I hope he hears it.”
Throughout this year, President Trump has railed against the league’s new kickoff rules that prevent the kicking team from moving forward until the ball lands or is caught by a returner on the opposing side.
During an interview earlier this month on The Pat McAfee Show, Trump said the new ”Dynamic Kickoff” rules, first introduced last year, have made the game “unromantic” and are “demeaning to football.”
“I do have to say, I’ll probably get myself in a little trouble for this. I hate the new kickoff in football,” Trump said. “I think it’s so terrible, I think it’s so demeaning, and I think it hurts the game. It hurts the pageantry.”
Earlier this season, Trump wrote on social media that the rules made the game “ridiculous looking” and led to “sissy” football.
The rules, which NFL owners voted to make permanent this year, were introduced to encourage more kick returns and fewer injuries to players.
During the first seven weeks of this season, the rate of kickoffs returned has more than doubled to 79.3 percent, though injuries are also up, according to The Athletic.
Head injuries, however, were down nearly 43 percent overall during the first year under Dynamic Kickoff rules, per Reuters.
The president has long been interested in football.
Earlier this month, he became the first sitting president since Jimmy Carter in 1978 to visit a regular-season NFL game when he dropped in on a Washington Commanders-Detroit Lions match-up.
The crowd reportedly booed the president on arrival.
Previously, Trump was an outspoken critic of NFL players who took a knee to protest racism amid the Black Lives Matter movement.
In the mid-1980s, Trump briefly owned the New Jersey Generals USFL team.
The Chiefs are ranked third in the AFC West, with five wins and five losses
