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Lazuli  2d ago (text post)   318 thread views

NFL Weekly Thread: Week 3

Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):

Thu 2024-09-19 8:15PM New England Patriots @ New York Jets
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Chicago Bears @ Indianapolis Colts
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Denver Broncos @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Green Bay Packers @ Tennessee Titans
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Houston Texans @ Minnesota Vikings
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM New York Giants @ Cleveland Browns
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Philadelphia Eagles @ New Orleans Saints
Sun 2024-09-22 1:00PM Los Angeles Chargers @ Pittsburgh Steelers
Sun 2024-09-22 4:05PM Carolina Panthers @ Las Vegas Raiders
Sun 2024-09-22 4:05PM Miami Dolphins @ Seattle Seahawks
Sun 2024-09-22 4:25PM Detroit Lions @ Arizona Cardinals
Sun 2024-09-22 4:25PM Baltimore Ravens @ Dallas Cowboys
Sun 2024-09-22 4:25PM San Francisco 49ers @ Los Angeles Rams
Sun 2024-09-22 8:20PM Kansas City Chiefs @ Atlanta Falcons
Mon 2024-09-23 7:30PM Jacksonville Jaguars @ Buffalo Bills
Mon 2024-09-23 8:15PM Washington Commanders @ Cincinnati Bengals
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I don't really follow the NFL, but I'm interested in everyone's opinions on the new kickoff. Also, what rules would you change?

The new rule also impacted onside kicks.

Before, special teams coordinators could fake a kickoff for an onside, creating, sometimes, a surprise and funny scramble by the receiving team to get the ball.

Now, the kicking team must be transparent on its intention to do an onside play, and that's led to some boring kicks and, to no one's surprise, an easy way for the receiving team to get the ball further up field than a fair catch.

This is pretty off the reservation, and I'm sure would have major drawbacks, but I was thinking about how much I hate the end of close football games. Specifically, the point at which the game becomes more about gaming the clock than it does playing one's opponent to the best of your ability. (This usually happens somewhere between 10 and 2 minutes remaining in the 4th quarter).

The only way I could think to solve this problem would be to eliminate the game clock entirely, and switch instead to a possession clock. Each team would get a pre-determined number of possessions, and would have, say, 3 minutes to score or punt. Clock stoppage would work basically the same as it does in the last 2 minutes of the current game (out-of-bounds, incomplete pass, penalty. Probably want to add stoppage on first downs like in college) and you'd get an elective stoppage or two per possession (to allow for running plays near the end of the clock). Turnovers don't count as possessions for the recovering team, so they become way more valuable as you'd be able to score and then immediately get the ball back.

No more useless kickoffs. No sitting on a small lead and milking the clock. Just balls out football from start to finish, unless it's a complete blowout, in which case the game wouldn't have been compelling anyways. Tell me why this would suck.

This is why rugby union has become my favorite code - more violent than soccer while way fewer stoppages than American.

Baseball has the best game endings for that reason, no clock. You have to let the other guy take his chances.

I wonder if that could be adapted to football rules with possessions.

Basketball games using the Elam ending are much better than the standard clock-based format, so I think there's some proof of concept for this being preferable, even though it's implausible that it'll ever be applied to the highest level of the sport.

My biggest current pet peeve is the way quarterback slides work. The rulebook definition is:

when a runner declares himself down by:

falling to the ground, or kneeling, and clearly making no immediate effort to advance.

sliding feet-first on the ground. When a runner slides feet-first, the ball is dead the instant he touches the ground with anything other than his hands or his feet. Notes:

Defenders are required to treat a sliding runner as they would a runner who is down by contact.

A defender must pull up when a runner begins a feet-first slide. This does not mean that all contact by a defender is illegal. If a defender has already committed himself, and the contact is unavoidable, it is not a foul unless the defender makes forcible contact into the head or neck area of the runner with the helmet, shoulder, or forearm, or commits some other act that is unnecessary roughness.

A runner who desires to take advantage of this protection is responsible for starting his slide before contact by a defensive player is imminent; if he does not, and waits until the last moment to begin his slide, he puts himself in jeopardy of being contacted.

In practice, that last part isn't enforced. Defenders are expected to do a superhuman job of avoiding runner and this is ruthlessly exploited by rushing quarterbacks. They wait till the last moment, use body language that feigns a slide to cause defenders to pause, slide late and draw personal fouls, and so on.

My solution would be simply eliminating the slide rule. There is no need for an additional way to give oneself up. If it's important that a given player not be contacted, he can following the first part of the rule instead - fall to the ground and clearly make no immediate effort to advance. If this isn't physical possible because the player is running at full speed, that's something they should have considered prior to running full speed as a ballcarrier.

Probably an improvement. The old kickoff became more and more of a formality, and the NFL was never going to eliminate the kickoff completely, so here we are. It'll likely be tweaked in the coming years. It's different. I haven't internalized the new rules yet.

I'm enjoying the Dynamic Kickoff, in that the old kickoff sucked. Right now it's been mostly played conservatively, but I think it's going to take time for kickers and teams to get used to taking risks with it, trying to get short returns rather than just taking the 30 yard touchback. Starting at the 30 definitely has a negative impact on the kicking team if they take the touchback, and we'll see if they can make it a skill issue over time. A kicker who can put it on the 1-5 consistently will gain a couple key yards of field position for his team.

I'd like to see them do away with the onside kick entirely, and replace it with a choice to take a 4th-and-20 at your own 35. Similar odds to an onside kick, similar consequences to failure, and it makes it a real football play instead of the goofball "hands team" stuff.

This might be sleep-deprived anger after MNF, but I've never really understood the purpose of the ineligible man downfield penalty.

Josh Allen once said in an interview that because it's not a "catch" until you have both feet down, receivers should be allowed to continue a forward pass if they catch it and throw it again before both feet are down. I have no idea if we'd ever see it in game, but it would be AWESOME to watch it happen, and doesn't hurt anything before that.

I'd like to see replay rules expanded to cover more penalties, as we're already at Talmudic levels of discernment as to the meaning of "catch" or "roughing the passer" and we're seeing every play ten times anyway. If the league is already stopping the game for five minutes for a penalty, it should be reviewed automatically in NY at least at a cursory level.

I'm not sure if I actually want to see it as a permanent change, but I'd be curious to see what would happen with changing the yardage for some penalties. Holding getting you ten yards back is brutal! Maybe experiment with using loss of down rather than yardage penalties for false-start/Offsides penalties. Some pass interference penalties are ticky-tack judgment calls, but completely blow open the game after they are called.

This might be sleep-deprived anger after MNF, but I've never really understood the purpose of the ineligible man downfield penalty.

Like most penalties, it's to avoid giving one side an unfair advantage, in this case, the offense. Since it only applies on passing plays before the ball is thrown, as it stands now defenses know that if a lineman starts blocking downfield that it's going to be a run play.

I don't find that advantage peculiarly unfair compared to other forms of play fake, which are considered fine and honorable. If you send your lineman downfield you lose him as a pass protector.

Yeah, but you gain him as a down field blocker, and that's a much bigger advantage. I think that you're opinion of this is based on when you've seen it called — which are otherwise legal plays that broke down — but haven't considered the implications of a permanent rule change and what that would mean for play design. You could run a play that effectively neutralizes the d line by having the o line slip past them for a quick pass to the TE out of shotgun, a sort of jailbreak screen on steroids. The only way to defend against this would be to stack the box on every play, opening up the long ball. Zone defense would be a thing of the past. Even run plays become easier since the defense doesn't know if they need to crash the RB or stay on their man. There are a lot of implications for this rule change.

a choice to take a 4th-and-20 at your own 35.

You want more BS game altering PI calls? Because that's how you get more BS game altering PI calls.

That's a good point, but seems fixable.

I just don't like the onside kick. It's a goofy thing that's more annoying than tension inducing.

I like the alternate option you mention (and that's gone around the league) in principle but the PI problem is intractable, especially in the way we see good "no calls" being the predominant paradigm unless its say, the chiefs losing the bengals.

Onside kick was goofy but worked fine, didn't have the other problem, and surprise onside kicks were hella fun.

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