Great topic, ForgetFavre. Though I'm not sure how much tweaking is needed with America's most popular sport right now. My thoughts on your suggestions in red below:
OK so your the commish. Or someone who has the power to make suggestions or to change the rules in the NFL.
What would they be?
Here's mine:
1) No more taking knees of the winning team in the final seconds of the game.
Each team must play as hard as they can until the clock winds down to 0.
"ForgetFavre" or Greg Schiano? I don't see the value in risking further injury after the outcome has been determined. If a team has a shot for the tie or the win, they'll play on. Otherwise, these are human beings playing an incredibly violent sport: there's no sense in having them go hard when there's nothing to be won.
2) During the last 5 minutes of regulation the clock will stop after each play is completed regardless of the outcome.
Andy Reid would be ecstatic to know that clock management would no longer be an issue for him. Why remove an important strategic consideration for coaches from the game?
Instead of warping the rules during the last five minutes of the game, why not stop the clock on first downs throughout the game? As in the college game, this has the effect of extending the final minutes of a competitive football game without changing the rules at some arbitrary point.
3) No more "hurry up offenses." The offense must wait for the dfense to be in line and ready before the snap.
So that the D-fense doesn't stall, they will also have a play clock.
I'm not so excited about this one because the nature of the sport already polices such tactics by the offense: if a team is going to run hurry up all the time, its defense will becomes gassed and burned on the other end. It's not a sustainable strategy for teams but I like that offenses can opt to shift gears. I don't perceive any sort of fairness issue in letting offenses dictate the pace of the game; it's an interesting part of the chess match and it belongs to the team that controls the football.
To prevent defenses from stalling, I think officials should have broad discretion to penalize defensive players for delay of game if they're not lined up and ready to go when the offense snaps the ball. There are rules in place to penalize teams that have burned all their timeouts when additional injury timeouts are required (see link here). I might eliminate the fourth injury timeout without penalty and/or adjust the penalty yardage for subsequent injury timeouts.
4) No more "Sudden death overtime" and no more tie games.
If the game goes into OT then it will be played the same way that college plays OT.
Am I the only one that like's the NFL's new overtime a rules? -I think they're a thoughtful twist on the college rules to eliminate the problem of the first team with the ball simply driving 40 yards and hitting a FG to win. Teams now know they can't win outright unless they score a TD but they'll probably take the FG on fourth down because it's better than nothing. If/When the other team gets the ball, the tables are turned and they know they can either win with a FG (because their defense forced the punt), match their opponent's FG (because they gave one up) or go for win the TD. I'm OK with this- doesn't feel like the matter is decided by the coin toss anymore.
5) Why bother with the extra point? Instead it will be 7 points for each TD.
A team can still go for a two point conversion to make it 9. But they must start from the 10 yard line to the goal.
Again, I don't see the need to reinvent the wheel here but it's an interesting thought.
6) Each NFL referee will now have that as his full time job.
It's already moving in this direction...
Your ideas....
I don't really have any ideas but I'm going to wax philosophical on some of the posts above:
I agree with those that have talked about the problems with pass interference these days but there's no simple fix. The problem with setting up a fixed yardage penalty has already been pointed out, though something should probably be done. A lot has been taken away from defenses in order to protect player safety (which is a good thing) but defensive backs should have greater leeway in defending the pass (you know, to make up for the fact that they can no longer launch themselves at a receivers' heads). I hate seeing pass interference when players' legs get tangled or when the defender gets his head around to locate the ball in time. Perhaps defensive backs should be able to keep a hand on a receiver in order to facilitate getting his head around to look for the pass. Either way, it's largely a judgment call that's difficult to make in real time.
Despite these problems, I disagree with those that have suggested
significantly liberalizing the current system of coach's challenges. Penalties such as pass interference and holding are fundamentally
judgment calls, so it's often difficult to form a unanimous opinion of whether a lineman was held or a receiver was interfered with. Consider the nuts out there arguing that Golden Tate actually caught that ball in Seattle...
And I'm not interested in additional lengthy stoppages so coaches can second-guess every questionable call. The idea of reviewing plays for calls that were missed entirely is absolutely preposterous. How much time do you think such a review takes? -Doesn't sound like a very spectator-friendly proposition for the fans at Lambeau in December. At some point you only subtract from the entertainment value of the sport.
You can't totally legislate human error from NFL officiating. It's going to happen. As long as such errors are not outcome determinative (ala the Seattle game), then I can accept these. It's another element teams must deal with (like weather conditions) and, theoretically, it affects all franchises equally over the course of a season (ala the Bears game last week).
With that said, I find what aspects of a play that coaches are allowed to review is arbitrary and stupid. Although, I'm apprehensive about making judgment calls such as holding or pass interference subject to replay review, I don't see why coaches can't have a play reviewed in order to determine whether a runner was down by contact or whether the clock has been correctly administered. Dumb.
Instead of receiving a third challenge, I think coaches should receive two red flags for the entire game. When they correctly challenge a ruling on the field, they retain their flag. If they lose the challenge, the coach loses one of his flags. In effect, challenges would be subject to a two-strike rule: if you're incorrect twice during the course of a game, you can't challenge anymore plays (with teams continuing to forfeit a TO when they're wrong).
Also, rather than have an additional NFL official in the booth reviewing the calls on the field, why not have each team appoint a specialist to advise the coach from the booth on challenges? Instead of relying on an independent official in the booth, everyone would understand that each team has it's own replay specialist on staff, looking after his club's best interests. This eliminates concerns of bias by the replay official in choosing what, if any, plays to review and I like placing restrictions on booth review by tying it to a team's challenge flags. It means there wouldn't be stoppages unless the mistake is obvious.
Again, I don't think you can eliminate mistakes or the element of judgment from NFL officiating and I don't think the number of disruptions necessary to fix every error would benefit the spectator experience.