Whitlock - Fixing the NFL

[Stinger]

Thursday, November 21, 2013
Fixing the NFL
By Jason Whitlock
ESPN.com

I'm falling out of love with professional football. We're growing apart. She's not the same game I remember as a young man.

She's unfair, favoring the fair-haired quarterback over all others. She's codependent, controlled and manipulated by overworked and/or narcissistic referees. She's put on weight and grown soft in all the wrong places, enacting strict rules about where, when and how she can be touched when we're most intimate.

I don't want a divorce. Football loved me when no one else would. She supported me through college. She's been the backbone to my career. She never gets jealous when I sneak off with basketball, golf, the Olympics or any of the other girls. It's been a wonderful, 40-year open marriage.

But we need counseling. We need to rework our relationship. We need ideas on how to spice up our love life. Occasional trips to Vegas for a wild romp at a sports book are no longer enough.

Sunday was my breaking point. Football and I were spooning on the couch watching the New Orleans Saints and the San Francisco 49ers exchange haymakers. With the Saints down three points late and the game on the brink of climax, Ahmad Brooks shot past the right tackle, steamrolled toward Drew Brees and bear-hugged the QB at his collarbone. The ball popped loose. The 49ers recovered and seemingly salted away a well-earned victory.

I was absolutely elated. Great game. Great finish. A tough football team won a tough football game by making the toughest play. That's the game I love unconditionally.

The ref wiped out the play. He threw a flag, penalizing Brooks for hitting Brees in the neck area. The Saints went on to win the game. It was flag football. That's what we have now in the NFL, a game dominated by judgment calls from name-brand referees, a game in which you have to ask permission to touch the quarterback, a game that wants to become safer through punishment.

"Scared straight doesn't work," Hall of Fame cornerback Darrell Green told Showtime's "Inside the NFL." "If it did, we wouldn't have all these people in prison."

Rather than punishment, Green championed a dramatic rule change to cut down on dangerous, concussion-causing hits. He suggested rules that stipulate safeties line up much closer to the line of scrimmage and cornerbacks must play man-to-man defense.

It's a fabulous idea. It doesn't quite go far enough though.

Given the league's justified safety concerns and its investment in star QBs, football is in need of an overhaul. I love Green's concept. I just want to enhance it. And I'd love to see the NFL test out these ideas in the Pro Bowl. There's no better place to experiment on the game than in Honolulu with the world's best players as lab rats. These tests would give the Pro Bowl a significance it hasn't had for decades.

Green is right about moving safeties closer to the line of scrimmage. You ever wonder why, on average, there are more big, over-the-middle hits in the NFL than in college and high school? It's because the safeties play deeper in the pros. Calvin Johnson, Dez Bryant, Julio Jones and strong-armed quarterbacks scare the hell out of NFL defensive coordinators.

In a standard Cover 2 NFL defense, the safeties line up 14 to 20 yards off the line of scrimmage. A weenie-arm high school QB and a 4.8-40-yard-dash receiver don't strike fear. In a standard Cover 2 high school defense, the safety lines up 10 to 15 yards off the line of scrimmage. Those 5 to 10 yards make a huge difference upon impact. Less time to gather speed means less impact upon collision.

If you make Washington safety Brandon Meriweather stand 8 yards from the line at the snap, he's going to blow up far fewer receivers. NFL safeties are big, athletic, fast, smart and instinctive. Give 'em a 20-yard downhill run and they can do a lot of damage. We need to shorten their runway.

Rule No. 1: No defender can line up more than 8 yards from the line of scrimmage.

Rule No. 2: Eight defenders must line up within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage.

I don't like Green's suggestion that corners must play man-to-man. I'm against limiting Dick LeBeau's creativity. A 76-year-old mind is a terrible thing to waste.

However, I would enact a rule that makes it much easier to play man-to-man. The game is too easy for the offense. We've yet to invent a quarterback better than John Elway. But all the rules changes have made Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Drew Brees and all the rest perform at Dan Marino levels.

That's not the game I love. Let's make the game fairer for defenders. Let's give the defense some tools.

Rule No. 3: Bump-and-run, physical pass coverage is allowed everywhere on the field until the ball is in the air.

No more bogus illegal contact penalties for inconsequential handsy stuff. No more ticky-tack pass interference calls. Let's make receivers fight to get off the line of scrimmage and fight to get open downfield. Let's play defense!

My next set of rule changes will be the most controversial. It's necessary. And remember, we can test these rules at the Pro Bowl.

Rule No. 4: Quarterbacks are not allowed to run the ball past the line of scrimmage.

Yep. No more running QBs. Once a quarterback steps beyond the line of scrimmage the play is dead. You don't want QBs to get hurt? Stop them from running.

Rule No. 5: The offense gets a 12th man -- a sixth blocker, a noneligible receiver.

Bringing the safeties closer to the line will make it much more difficult to run the football. Outlawing quarterbacks from running will make it much more difficult to run the football. Allowing defensive backs to play physical with receivers will make it more difficult to pass the football. How do we solve all of these issues? We give the offense an extra blocker. This will help with the running game and pass protection.

Peyton Manning will have more time to throw the football. He'll make good use of it.

Along with these changes, I propose that we take a hard look at relaxing the rules regarding hitting a QB in the head and neck areas.

Forbidding a defender from leading with his helmet to the chin and head area is a good rule. Ahmad Brooks' hit on Brees should be perfectly legal. Accidental head slaps to the helmet area are no big deal and shouldn't be penalized.

It's fine to penalize helmet/shoulder pads/body shots to a quarterback's knees. A defender should be allowed to tackle, with his hands and arms, at the QB's knees and shin.

Hitting the quarterback hard in the pocket while he is holding the football is an essential element of football. This cannot be eliminated. When a QB releases the ball, I'm all for protecting him. But we've clearly gone too far. Drew Brees is a football player. Football is supposed to hurt.

Like the rest of America, Roger Goodell and the NFL have fallen in love with a law-and-order approach to every problem. The league wants to fix its concussion problem with fines, penalties and handcuffing defenders. Punishment doesn't address root causes.

If the NFL fixes its game by massaging its rules, college and high school football will follow suit, and the game will be safer for kids. That's how we all win. That's how we get back the game we love.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10...xing-nfl-rules

[MahiMike]

I'm tired of them pussifying the game too. I say it's time to go the Rollerball route. Once us real fans get sick and tired of the flag football product, we could watch the RFL.

Made up of guys on death row come out and beat the crap out of each other. If the ref calls a flag, the fans vote whether to kick the refs ass....lol

[Nightfyre]

Running man, hell yes.

[Predarat]

Rule # 2, first learn rule #1.

[Dayze]

They game is essentially neutered, watered down, and more often than not, not very exciting. It's become sort of a novelty to me. National games are the same group of teams nearly each week. There are the 'stars' that are endlessly pimped.

But I don't think these rules would improve a thing; probably make it worse.

[Ace Gunner]

ho li fook jwhit did a nice job with this -- fully onboard and think this will make the game more of what I like -- contact and without the bonecrushing, but still good contact

[Hoover]

Good

Rule No. 2: Eight defenders must line up within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage.

Rule No. 3: Bump-and-run, physical pass coverage is allowed everywhere on the field until the ball is in the air.

Interesting

Rule No. 4: Quarterbacks are not allowed to run the ball past the line of scrimmage.

Either this or stop treating them like little girls.

Dumb

Rule No. 1: No defender can line up more than 8 yards from the line of scrimmage.

So much for the prevent D

Rule No. 5: The offense gets a 12th man -- a sixth blocker, a noneligible receiver.

Really dumb

[BWillie]

I'd like to get rid of the running into the kicker penalty. Or it should be more aptly called I almost blocked the field goal but the poor little kicker landed on my head and fell down. He might have got hurt, poor kicker.

[Easy 6]

Rules schmules, no more rules and as a matter of fact, they need to start walking back some of the rules they've come up with the last three years.

Fans hate most of them as do the players, even the former jock talking heads who used to be offensive guys are saying the rules are too skewed towards offense and that its hurting the game.

[headsnap]

Originally Posted by Phobia

The premise of the article is fine. But I'm not sure about the proposed rules changes. I am very frustrated with the ticky-tack flags and the acting that players do in order to draw a flag. I would endorse fines for football players taking a dive though. I hate that.

now the London move is starting to make sense....

[Eleazar]

I don't think these would fix anything.

There's a fallacy here, borne out of the play Whitlock saw and used as his example. The fallacy is that the player hitting the player who sustains a concussion needs time to gather up all the speed it takes to cause a concussion.

That's simply not true. People get concussions every day from the acceleration between their head and the floor when they fall down, and that's not usually even unbroken acceleration. There are a million tiny variables in how concussions occur and they are different in every collision. A defensive back and his shoulder can be only 5 yards away from a defenseless receiver and still lay a devastating hit, because of the opposing forces involved. And I'm also sure that lots of offensive linemen have concussions, and no one is generally running up and blasting them from 20 yards away.

I'm sure that what Whitlock would say is, "reducing the speed of colliding players will, in par, reduce concussions." That's certainly true. As the force with which your head impacts something increases, the probability of sustaining an injury approaches 1.

But isn't this the strategy the NFL is using that we are all complaining about? That if A would reduce concussions, then we can't do enough A?

Why don't we do things that keep the integrity of the game and still protect brains, like increase the thickness and material of helmet padding, or add padding to the exterior of the shoulderpads as well?

I think the play he chose was a bad example, because it was a ticky-tack helmet to helmet call, and in using it he reached a conclusion that's only somewhat true.

What we should really see is someone do a study where the look at every concussion or possible concussion and attempt to catalog what happens in each case where an injury results or doesn't.

I think that ham-fisted attempts to solve this problem have resulted in the flag-football NFL we have today, and another dart at the wall isn't going to help.

[vailpass]

Originally Posted by htismaqe

It's not going to stop. As the lawsuits continue, so too will the "tweaks" to the game.

Arena ball on a 100-yard field.

*sigh*

['Hamas' Jenkins]

The NFL's target audience is not traditional football fans anymore, and it hasn't been for nearly a decade.

[Dayze]

I loathe fantasy football. there's such a glaring difference between NCAA and NFL. Yeah, the talent is different obviously, but there isn't the non-stop hype for fantasy college football.

[Bugeater]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

The NFL's target audience is not traditional football fans anymore, and it hasn't been for nearly a decade.

Seems to me it's targeted to fantasy dorks more than anything.

[Contrarian]

I just want the last five minutes of the game for teams not to be able to run the clock out. After a play the clock stops. No more milking the clock crap at the end of the game and wasting useless timeouts while the other team kneels on it.