03-16-2011
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Sunsets and Warm Beer....
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: The Bottom of a Pint Glass...
Posts: 1,933
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Nanny Football League???
I can agree with most of this, but it's going to change the game alot! No more exciting catches over the middle, no more vicious sacks, no more "OH my god, did you see that hit?". The scores will change too, there will be a lot more catches made - potentially....
N.F.L. Will Consider Rules to Make Kickoffs Safer
Bad news for Devin Hester, and teams that rely on dynamic kick returners: N.F.L. owners will consider a proposal at their meeting next week to make kickoffs — among football’s most dangerous plays — safer.
Even with a work stoppage threatening at least the start of the 2011 season, the league’s competition committee offered a peek Wednesday at what the game will look like whenever play begins.
Among the changes: moving the kickoff line from the 30 to the 35-yard line, which will likely increase the number of touchbacks and decrease the number of returns, and putting the ball at the 25 instead of the 20-yard line after a touchback.
Kickoffs have long produced some of the most vicious collisions in the game and the rule change would also eliminate all wedges used in blocking and would not allow any member of the kickoff team except the kicker to line up more than five yards from the kickoff line. Currently, the kickoff team typically lines up as much as 15 yards behind the line, to get more of a running start. Those changes are intended to limit the speed of hits. Under the proposal, kicking the ball out of bounds would put the ball 25 yards from the kickoff line instead of the current 30yards, meaning the ball would be placed at the receiving team’s 40.
“We want to change the entire play,” said Atlanta Falcons president Rich McKay, the chairman of the competition committee, which unanimously endorsed the kickoff change. “The play is such and the injury data is such and the video is such that it needs revision.”
There are two other rules changes that owners will vote on:
¶Instant replay will be used on all scoring players to confirm the call. Currently, scoring plays are automatically reviewed only in the last two minutes of each half. And coaches would be allowed only two challenges, because the committee found the third was rarely used.
¶The rule protecting a defenseless receiver will be rewritten to expand his protection until he can protect himself or he clearly becomes a runner. Rules defining a defenseless player include eight categories: a player in the act of or having just thrown a pass; a receiver attempting to make a catch or who has completed a catch but who has not had time to protect himself; a runner already in the grasp of a tackler and whose forward progress has been stopped; a kickoff or punt returner attempting to field a kick in the air; a player on the ground at the end of a play; a kicker, punter or returner during the kick; a quarterback at any time after a change of possession; and a player who receives a blindside block when the blocker is moving toward his own end line.
During a conference call Wednesday, Ray Anderson, the N.F.L.’s chief disciplinarian, made clear that there is a much greater chance of players being suspended for flagrant hits or repeated violations in 2011. The N.F.L. threatened suspension last year during its crackdown on hits to the head, but no players were suspended. Anderson said Wednesday that until proper advance notice of the rules and consequences had been given, the league felt it had to be more lenient.
"Frankly, now that the notice has been given, players and coaches and clubs are very aware of what the emphasis is and we won’t have that hesitation," Anderson said. "Everyone will be very clearly on notice now that a suspension is very viable for us and we will exercise it.”
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