Get Rewarded for putting the kickoff thru the uprights? (1 Viewer)

[Niles Standish]

3 or 4 of these minor changes every season and before long the game will be completely different.

...and some of you will be surprised when it's 2-hand tag with safe spaces.

The game is already very different than 70s/80s football.  And when it gets down to it the game is better from a money standpoint.  Maybe not better for you or for me.  But there's a reason the NFL is king of all sports right now.  And if 2-hand tag with safe spaces brings more money into the NFL coffers that's what we'll have in 30 years.

 

[GregR]

Except only two new rules in what I listed before were safety related. Banning chop blocks, which, let's be honest is joke were even still legal in 2015. And then the horse collar addendum which is so poorly worded I'm not even sure how it is different given they are describing making illegal what a horse collar tackle already is and which was already illegal?

3 were. Moving the touchback to the 25 was intended to reduce returns, which it did though probably not as much as they'd have liked.

Though I don't think rule changes have to be about safety to be good.   Why should touching a pass when your foot grazed the sideline be a 5 yard loss? You already can't be the first to catch the pass, that's more than enough of a penalty. Why should coaches on the sideline be able to use the helmet radio but not the box? Another good change.  I think people have been overwhelmingly in favor of the PAT change.

They make some occasional bad choices, but they make a lot of decent ones too. The proposal this year about resetting the game clock when a team commits multiple fouls to manipulate the game clock is a good one, IMHO, that should be passed unless there's some issue with it I haven't heard argued.

 

[GregR]

I'll add, I know how passionately people were upset by the hit to the head of a defenseless receiver rule.

But look back at it with hindsight. There was a lot of headhunting going on. Needless head hunting that was doing little more than seriously injuring guys. They made a rule to stop it and had to enforce it heinously hard to get players to change the way they played. After 2-3 years that was accomplished and they backed off the enforcement to the point where you can go an entire weekend of games and rarely see it called because players aren't going after the head now though they still hit hard.

Yeah it sucked to go through for those first couple of years, but the real problem if you wanted to make that part of the game safer is the players (and I'm sure some coaches) weren't going to adjust for anything less than making them feel in-game-result pain if they didn't stop. I think the NFL deserves credit they were willing to take the backlash necessary to remove that from the game for player safety.

 

[DropKick]

I'll add, I know how passionately people were upset by the hit to the head of a defenseless receiver rule.

But look back at it with hindsight. There was a lot of headhunting going on. Needless head hunting that was doing little more than seriously injuring guys. They made a rule to stop it and had to enforce it heinously hard to get players to change the way they played. After 2-3 years that was accomplished and they backed off the enforcement to the point where you can go an entire weekend of games and rarely see it called because players aren't going after the head now though they still hit hard.

Yeah it sucked to go through for those first couple of years, but the real problem if you wanted to make that part of the game safer is the players (and I'm sure some coaches) weren't going to adjust for anything less than making them feel in-game-result pain if they didn't stop. I think the NFL deserves credit they were willing to take the backlash necessary to remove that from the game for player safety.

Fair points.

 

[Bossman]

Exactly.

We keep giving inches, and eventually it will be soccer.

This is like saying ...  I'll save a $1000 a year and eventually I'll be a millionaire.

The proposed rule change is very inconsequential. It would not take anything away from the game at all ... in fact, it gives us something to watch for during kickoffs vs the kicker just driving it thru the back of the end zone or the kneel down.

That said, here's the issue that I see with the proposed rule change.

Kickers going for the uprights that come up short will give the returner the middle of the field to work with. Returners would more likely attempt a return from the middle vs being pinned to one side = more returns. This rule change could have the opposite effect that the NFL is trying to produce.