Cordarrelle Patterson holds the NFL record for the most career kickoff-return touchdowns with nine. Josh Cribbs and Leon Washington are tied for second with eight each, while Mel Gray, Dante Hall, Ollie Matson, Gale Sayers and Travis Williams share fourth place with six.
This objective leaderboard covers recorded NFL regular-season kickoff-return touchdowns through the completed 2025 season. Punt-return touchdowns and postseason returns are excluded. The complete table includes all 56 players with at least three career scores because a top-50 cutoff would split the 25-player tie at rank 32.
Table of Contents
- How the Leaderboard Works
- Players With Four Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
- Players With Five Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
- T-4. Travis Williams: 6
- T-4. Gale Sayers: 6
- T-4. Ollie Matson: 6
- T-4. Dante Hall: 6
- T-4. Mel Gray: 6
- T-2. Leon Washington: 8
- T-2. Josh Cribbs: 8
- 1. Cordarrelle Patterson: 9
- What the Leaderboard Reveals
- Complete Career Leaderboard
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Conclusion
- More NFL Return Rankings
How the NFL Kickoff-Return Touchdown Leaderboard Works
Career regular-season kickoff-return touchdowns determine every placement. Total return yards, yards per return, punt returns, offensive production and playoff performances do not change the order.
Ties use standard competition ranking. Josh Cribbs and Leon Washington share second place, so the next rank is fourth. The same rule places 11 players at T-9, 12 players at T-20 and 25 players at T-32.
The statistical scope runs through the completed 2025 regular season and follows the recorded career leaderboard beginning in 1941. The table ends at three touchdowns, the next complete scoring tier after the players featured in the main breakdown. Including the whole tier produces 56 rows and avoids an arbitrary cutoff inside a tie.
This scoring-only approach creates a different order from a yardage or efficiency ranking. Brian Mitchell owns the career records for kickoff returns and kickoff-return yards but scored four return touchdowns. Gale Sayers handled far fewer returns, yet his 30.6-yard career average remains the highest among qualified NFL leaders.
12 Players With Four Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
Twelve players share 20th place with four career regular-season kickoff-return touchdowns: Ron Brown, Andre Coleman, Andre’ Davis, Jacoby Ford, Tony Horne, Brian Mitchell, Brad Smith, Cecil Turner, Buddy Young, Darrick Vaughn, Jon Vaughn and Tamarick Vanover.
The tie brings together several very different return profiles. Mitchell reached four touchdowns while setting career volume records. Turner scored all four of his touchdowns during one season. Young built his case in the league’s earlier recorded era and remains notable for his return efficiency.
Brian Mitchell
Brian Mitchell accumulated an NFL-record 607 kickoff returns and 14,014 kickoff-return yards. His four touchdowns show why the career yardage and scoring leaderboards answer different questions: nobody sustained more return volume, but 19 players reached the end zone more often.
Cecil Turner
Cecil Turner scored all four of his career kickoff-return touchdowns for the Chicago Bears in 1970. That remains tied for the NFL single-season record and makes Turner the clearest example of one extraordinary season defining an entire career total.
Buddy Young
Buddy Young recorded four kickoff-return touchdowns from 1947 through 1955. His combination of scoring and per-return production keeps him prominent even though his career came before the era of year-round return specialists and 16- or 17-game schedules.
11 Players With Five Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
Eleven players share ninth place with five career regular-season kickoff-return touchdowns: Michael Bates, Timmy Brown, Kene Nwangwu, Devin Hester, Jacoby Jones, Percy Harvin, Justin Miller, Bobby Mitchell, Terrence McGee, Allen Rossum and Abe Woodson.
This group includes high-volume specialists, short-career efficiency standouts and players whose broader return résumés were even stronger than their kickoff totals suggest.
Kene Nwangwu
Kene Nwangwu reached five career kickoff-return touchdowns during the 2025 season. His fifth was a 99-yard return for the New York Jets against the Cleveland Browns, and he finished the season with 2,640 yards on 89 career kickoff returns.
That works out to 29.7 yards per return, placing Nwangwu second only to Gale Sayers among qualified career leaders through 2025. His five touchdowns on a comparatively small workload make him one of the most efficient scoring threats in the table.
Devin Hester
Devin Hester scored five regular-season kickoff-return touchdowns. He added 14 punt-return touchdowns, giving him a record 19 combined regular-season kickoff and punt return scores.
That distinction explains why Hester can be the strongest overall return-specialist candidate without leading this narrower kickoff-only category. His Hall of Fame résumé is much larger than the single column measured here.
Abe Woodson
Abe Woodson scored five kickoff-return touchdowns and gained 5,538 yards on 193 returns. His 28.7-yard career average places him among the most efficient qualified returners in league history and gives his five-score total more context than the raw rank alone provides.
T-4. Travis Williams: 6 Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
Travis Williams scored six career kickoff-return touchdowns in only five NFL seasons. His defining year was 1967, when he gained 739 yards and scored four times on just 18 kickoff returns.
Those four touchdowns remain tied for the single-season record. Williams finished with a 27.5-yard average on 102 career returns, pairing one of the position’s greatest peaks with a short but highly productive career.
T-4. Gale Sayers: 6 Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
Gale Sayers scored six career kickoff-return touchdowns on only 91 returns. His 2,781 yards produced a 30.6-yard average, the highest mark among qualified NFL career leaders through the 2025 season.
Sayers scored all six kickoff-return touchdowns during his first three seasons. That concentration of production is the strongest efficiency case near the top of the leaderboard: Patterson, Cribbs and Washington scored more, but none approached Sayers’ yards per return.
T-4. Ollie Matson: 6 Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
Ollie Matson recorded six career kickoff-return touchdowns from 1952 through 1966. He gained 3,746 yards on 143 returns, an average of 26.2 yards per return.
Matson’s six scores were part of a broader Hall of Fame career that included major contributions as a runner, receiver and returner. His presence in this tie also demonstrates how long explosive kickoff value has mattered, even when return opportunities and season lengths differed sharply from the modern game.
T-4. Dante Hall: 6 Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
Dante Hall finished with six career kickoff-return touchdowns and became one of the defining return specialists of the early 2000s.
Hall handled 426 kickoff returns for 10,136 yards. His 23.8-yard average trails the efficiency leaders, but few players combined six touchdowns with that level of sustained workload. His additional success on punt returns made him even more dangerous than this kickoff-only total shows.
T-4. Mel Gray: 6 Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
Mel Gray scored six career kickoff-return touchdowns while gaining 10,250 yards on 421 returns. Only three players accumulated more career kickoff-return yards.
Gray’s best scoring season came with the Detroit Lions in 1994. He gained 1,276 yards, averaged 28.4 yards per return and scored three times. That peak gives his career total more weight than volume alone would suggest.
T-2. Leon Washington: 8 Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
Leon Washington is tied for second in NFL history with eight career kickoff-return touchdowns.
Washington scored three times for the New York Jets in 2007 and matched that total for the Seattle Seahawks in 2010. He finished with 7,553 yards on 292 returns, averaging 25.9 yards.
His touchdown frequency separates him from most high-volume returners. Washington reached eight scores on 134 fewer returns than Josh Cribbs, giving the two second-place players contrasting cases built on efficiency and workload.
T-2. Josh Cribbs: 8 Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
Josh Cribbs shares second place with eight career kickoff-return touchdowns.
Cribbs gained 11,113 yards on 426 kickoff returns, averaging 26.1 yards. His 2009 season produced three touchdowns, and his combination of scoring and volume made him the strongest direct challenger to Patterson once the career record changed hands.
Washington scored at the same rate on fewer returns, but Cribbs built a much larger yardage total. No other player in the top three paired at least eight touchdowns with more than 11,000 kickoff-return yards.
1. Cordarrelle Patterson: 9 Kickoff-Return Touchdowns
Cordarrelle Patterson is the NFL’s all-time career leader with nine regular-season kickoff-return touchdowns.
Patterson entered 2022 tied with Cribbs and Washington at eight. On November 20, 2022, he returned a kickoff 103 yards for a touchdown against the Chicago Bears and took sole possession of the record.
He finished with 8,229 kickoff-return yards on 284 returns, averaging 29.0 yards. Patterson therefore owns the scoring record while also ranking among the most efficient qualified returners ever.
The separation is small in raw touchdowns but meaningful in context. Patterson scored one more time than Cribbs on 142 fewer returns and averaged 2.9 more yards per return. He also sustained a near-29-yard average across more than three times as many returns as Gale Sayers.
What the Career Leaderboard Reveals
Touchdown Frequency and Career Volume Produce Different Leaders
Brian Mitchell owns the career records for kickoff returns and yards, but he ranks T-20 in touchdowns. Sayers ranks T-4 despite handling only 91 returns. Patterson sits between those extremes with record scoring, substantial volume and elite efficiency.
The Top Three Reached Their Totals in Different Ways
Cribbs built the biggest workload of the top three, Washington scored eight times on far fewer opportunities and Patterson combined nine scores with a 29.0-yard average. The touchdown column places them first and tied for second, but the supporting numbers explain why their careers were not interchangeable.
The Single-Season Record Still Belongs to Two Players
Travis Williams scored four kickoff-return touchdowns in 1967, and Cecil Turner matched him in 1970. No player has surpassed that total, even though the career leaderboard now spans multiple eras of expanded schedules.
Three Touchdowns Is a Meaningful Historical Cutoff
Only 56 players appear in the complete table with at least three recorded regular-season kickoff-return touchdowns. The final 25-player tie is large, but preserving it shows how rare repeat scoring has been and avoids implying that one member of the tie ranks above another.
NFL Career Kickoff-Return Touchdown Leaders
| Rank | Player | Kickoff-Return TDs |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cordarrelle Patterson | 9 |
| T-2 | Josh Cribbs | 8 |
| T-2 | Leon Washington | 8 |
| T-4 | Mel Gray | 6 |
| T-4 | Dante Hall | 6 |
| T-4 | Ollie Matson | 6 |
| T-4 | Gale Sayers | 6 |
| T-4 | Travis Williams | 6 |
| T-9 | Michael Bates | 5 |
| T-9 | Timmy Brown | 5 |
| T-9 | Kene Nwangwu | 5 |
| T-9 | Devin Hester | 5 |
| T-9 | Jacoby Jones | 5 |
| T-9 | Percy Harvin | 5 |
| T-9 | Justin Miller | 5 |
| T-9 | Bobby Mitchell | 5 |
| T-9 | Terrence McGee | 5 |
| T-9 | Allen Rossum | 5 |
| T-9 | Abe Woodson | 5 |
| T-20 | Ron Brown | 4 |
| T-20 | Andre Coleman | 4 |
| T-20 | Andre’ Davis | 4 |
| T-20 | Jacoby Ford | 4 |
| T-20 | Tony Horne | 4 |
| T-20 | Brian Mitchell | 4 |
| T-20 | Brad Smith | 4 |
| T-20 | Cecil Turner | 4 |
| T-20 | Buddy Young | 4 |
| T-20 | Darrick Vaughn | 4 |
| T-20 | Jon Vaughn | 4 |
| T-20 | Tamarick Vanover | 4 |
| T-32 | Cullen Bryant | 3 |
| T-32 | Lynn Chandnois | 3 |
| T-32 | Raymond Clayborn | 3 |
| T-32 | Dennis Gentry | 3 |
| T-32 | Ted Ginn Jr. | 3 |
| T-32 | Dave Hampton | 3 |
| T-32 | Ellis Hobbs | 3 |
| T-32 | Tyrone Hughes | 3 |
| T-32 | Ronney Jenkins | 3 |
| T-32 | Terry Kirby | 3 |
| T-32 | Michael Lewis | 3 |
| T-32 | Lenny Lyles | 3 |
| T-32 | Jerome Mathis | 3 |
| T-32 | Mercury Morris | 3 |
| T-32 | Chad Morton | 3 |
| T-32 | Andre Roberts | 3 |
| T-32 | Deion Sanders | 3 |
| T-32 | Ron Smith | 3 |
| T-32 | Vitamin Smith | 3 |
| T-32 | Micheal Spurlock | 3 |
| T-32 | LaRod Stephens-Howling | 3 |
| T-32 | Steve Van Buren | 3 |
| T-32 | Charley Warner | 3 |
| T-32 | Dave Williams | 3 |
| T-32 | Derrick Witherspoon | 3 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Who has the most kickoff-return touchdowns in NFL history?
Cordarrelle Patterson holds the NFL career record with nine regular-season kickoff-return touchdowns.
Who is second in career kickoff-return touchdowns?
Josh Cribbs and Leon Washington are tied for second with eight each. Both shared the career record before Patterson scored his ninth touchdown in 2022.
How many kickoff-return touchdowns did Devin Hester score?
Devin Hester scored five regular-season kickoff-return touchdowns. He also scored 14 times on punt returns, which is why his overall return résumé is substantially larger than his place on this kickoff-only list.
Who has the most kickoff-return touchdowns in one NFL season?
Travis Williams and Cecil Turner share the single-season record with four. Williams set the mark in 1967, and Turner matched it in 1970.
Why does the complete table include 56 players instead of 50?
Twenty-five players are tied at rank 32 with three career touchdowns. Including all of them preserves the complete tie. The totals cover regular-season kickoff returns only, so punt-return touchdowns and postseason returns are not included.
Cordarrelle Patterson Stands Alone With Nine
Cordarrelle Patterson is the NFL’s career leader with nine regular-season kickoff-return touchdowns. Cribbs and Washington share second with eight, while five players sit at T-4 with six.
Patterson’s record is supported by more than one extra score. He averaged 29.0 yards across 284 returns, giving him the strongest combination of career scoring, efficiency and sustained workload at the top of this leaderboard.
More NFL Return Rankings
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