Return touchdowns used to electrify the Super Bowl

On the night the lights went out at the Superdome in New Orleans, fans went wild for a hometown hero. The late Baltimore Ravens kick returner Jacoby Jones got ahead of the power outage that delayed Super Bowl XLVII by flying through a mass of bodies for a record score.

The following year, Percy Harvin grabbed a bouncing kickoff at his own 13-yard-line and brushed past the fingertips of lunging tacklers on his way to paydirt. Harvin hit every hole to widen the Seattle Seahawks' lead over a Peyton Manning-led juggernaut, which suffered a historic Super Bowl blowout.

Splash plays on special teams, from kick returns to punt-block touchdowns, used to be a staple of the NFL's championship game. But Harvin's breakaway, the last of these arresting sights, is more than a decade old. They're a distant memory as the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles land in New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX.

A Stathead search for Super Bowl kickoffs, punts, and field-goal attempts leading to a return touchdown pulls up 14 results. They've supercharged a quarter of championship clashes.

Connective threads link these plays. Different versions of the Raiders - Los Angeles in the 1980s, Oakland in the 2000s - recorded two of the three punt-block return touchdowns. Washington kicking specialist Jeff Hayes and the dynastic San Francisco 49ers of the '80s and '90s were on the wrong end of multiple scores. Harvin and Jones erupted right after halftime, and Devin Hester broke loose for the 2006 Chicago Bears on the opening kick.

Some of the touchdowns dented massive deficits. Others extinguished a trailing opponent's flicker of hope. Most brightened a futile night - the scoring team went 5-9 in those Super Bowls.

All illustrated how special teams - football's often overlooked phase - can tilt the action in rare, exhilarating ways.

Garo Yepremian's misadventure in Super Bowl VII almost ruined the Miami Dolphins' perfect 1972 season. They led 14-0 in the waning minutes when Washington's Bill Brundage blocked the southpaw kicker's 42-yard attempt. Yepremian nimbly scooped the ball but, rather than fall to his stomach, whiffed a pass and deflected it to defender Mike Bass. Because Miami stuffed Washington's next drive, the memory of the gaffe is comedic, not haunting.

The first Super Bowl punt-block TD - Matt Blair pierced the Pittsburgh Steelers' line for the rejection - was a silver lining for the '74 Minnesota Vikings, who plunked the upright on the extra point and committed five giveaways in defeat. The fate of the '83 Raiders differed, as Derrick Jensen's soaring swat and recovery helped deliver the Silver and Black's third and most recent championship.

Dolphins kick returner Fulton Walker raced through the first wave of defense and dizzied Hayes on his historic 98-yard touchdown in Super Bowl XVII. Explosive return scores were the highlights of championship appearances for the Cincinnati Bengals, then-San Diego Chargers, and Atlanta Falcons, who are a combined 0-6 in the Super Bowl despite those momentum swings.

Iconic kick returners lit up the Big Game. Desmond Howard's 99-yard speed burst restored a two-touchdown lead as the '96 Green Bay Packers beat the New England Patriots. Once a Heisman Trophy winner at Michigan, Howard remains the only specialist to be named Super Bowl MVP.

Ron Dixon's flash of brilliance for the 2000 New York Giants was instantly upstaged. Baltimore returner Jermaine Lewis offset Dixon's swerving 97-yard runback in Super Bowl XXXV by tiptoeing down the right sideline for his own 84-yard score. The emphatic response capped a stunning sequence of touchdowns on three straight plays as the Ravens, who started the spree with a pick-6, coasted to glory.

CBS announcer Jim Nantz had an inkling that the Indianapolis Colts would crumble to open Super Bowl XLI. Nantz mentioned their weak kick coverage just before the quicksilver Hester, a wondrous rookie and future Hall of Famer, housed the biggest of his 20 career return TDs. The Colts overpowered Chicago that night but failed to touch Hester on his 92-yard dash until a valiant, diving tackle attempt sent him tumbling into the end zone.

Ensuing return scores were rewarded with a ring. Jones' touchdown, which put the Ravens up 28-6 in the 2012 Harbaugh Bowl, gave them just enough breathing room after the Superdome blackout was resolved to foil San Francisco's furious comeback. Harvin helped Seattle rout the Denver Broncos 43-8 - the Super Bowl's third-largest margin of victory.

Kansas City's responsible for recent close calls. The best Super Bowl kickoff return of the past decade was Byron Pringle's 41-yard effort for the 2020 Chiefs, who fell to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. There's never been a Super Bowl punt-return TD, but Kadarius Toney juked and jived to gain 65 yards ahead of a key scoring drive in the 2022 Chiefs-Eagles heavyweight fight.

The dynamic kickoff could revive the heroic return. A league-wide touchback rate that ballooned to 76% in the 2023 playoffs is down to 53% in the ongoing postseason, the first with the new format, per TruMedia. Long gains by the Chiefs' Nikko Remigio and the Eagles' Kenneth Gainwell in the divisional round helped boost the NFL's current yards per return average (26.1) to its highest point in a dozen years.

Special plays influence championship outcomes. A punt-block safety, forced in Super Bowl X by airborne running back Reggie Harrison, sparked one of Pittsburgh's great Steel Curtain squads to a comeback win in the fourth quarter. And Thomas Morstead's deceptive onside kick - the opening salvo of the second half - turned the tide of Super Bowl XLIV for the New Orleans Saints.

Five recent Super Bowl finalists added more than six expected points, outpacing the value of a touchdown, through their performances on special teams, according to TruMedia. Each unit showed up, did its job, and enriched the game's long, eventful history with one amazing play.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.