A number of potential rule changes have been kicked around this week during the owners meetings. The two notable rules that have passed are that the NFL will now review all turnovers, and regular season overtime will now be treated as postseason overtime has been treated over the past couple of years.
Reviewing turnovers will now be in the hands of the booth instead of being the coaches’ responsibility. It’s a mixed bag of tricks, and I’m still not sure how I feel about the change.
On one hand, booth oversight of big plays ensures that calls will be correct on potentially game changing plays. On the other hand, such reviews take a lot of the strategy out of the coach’s challenges, and they slow the game down. I don’t know how many of you watched much college football last season, but some of the plays they review are absolute head scratchers, and they take any flow out of the game. Football is already a naturally disjointed game, that is, there’s enough starting and stopping in football without unneeded reviews.
The other big rule change is that regular season overtime rules are now the same as postseason overtime rules. Now, even in the regular season, both teams will have the opportunity to possess the ball at least once unless the team that got the ball first scores a touchdown.
I like the fact that the NFL is re-unifying the overtime rules once again, but they’re unifying a crappy rule. This hybrid of sudden death and college football style isn’t as good as either, and it just confuses everyone, including the players and coaches. Here’s a short explanation of the overtime rules that are now being used in the regular season.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hHC8U6GCXgU
This issue should have been properly addressed by the owners. Did you follow that explanation? Here’s a thought. Why don’t we just say that both teams get at least one possession regardless? After both teams have had the ball, it would then become sudden death. Is that too difficult.
Here’s another idea. Why don’t we just play overtime as essentially another 4th quarter? Use the entire 15 minutes, and whoever is ahead at the end wins the game. Maybe that just makes too much sense. Yes, I’m glad that the NFL has one set of overtime rules again (with minor tweaks such as ties in the regular season), but the system just isn’t very good. I’m sure the owners could come up with something better than the current system.
