How Football Has Lost its Edge
Over the past two years, the National Football League has undergone several rule changes in its off-season.
These include:
· The distance from where you kick a point after attempt following a touchdown
· A touchback on the kickoff following a score resulting with the offense beginning their drive at the 25-yard line instead of the 20
· Clarity to what the guidelines are for a catch
With the safety of players becoming more and more of a topic of discussion, the NFL decided to use its preseason exhibition games to protect the heads of players.
This normally only applies to a defensive player who attempts to tackle, but the NFL looked to eradicate head contact made by any player whatsoever to prevent serious spinal and head injuries.
Much of this comes from last season being one of many injuries to star players, including middle linebacker Ryan Shazier of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Shazier’s injury is significant because it came due to the lowering of the head and caused him spinal damage to the point where he couldn’t move his lower body at all. Thankfully, he has made tremendous strides in his recovery and has regained his ability to walk.
This NFL preseason, we saw an unruly amount of penalties thrown regarding this head-contact rule on plays that would fall under “normal”.
During a two-week span of exhibition play, 51 head-to-head contact rule penalties were called in just 33 games. That averages to a penalty per game, an alarming rate.
There were games played were 9 of such penalties were called.
This brings up the question, is the NFL losing it’s toughness that the sport was founded upon.
Much of football fandom agreed and even players had something to say about this penalty debacle.
The NFL Competition Committee responded to both coach and player outrage with not a change to the rule an assurance that we’d see it less on typical “football” plays.
The grit and toughness had been restored to football, or so we thought.
Through the first half of the NFL regular season, the new issue that has unraveled is the roughing the passer rule.
This penalty is called when a quarterback is tackled with intent to harm either after a pass is thrown or not.
The issue at hand is that defensive players are being penalized for tackles that weren’t an issue before. The large part of the problem is that the players that are engaging the quarterback cannot put their body weight into the tackle.
Everyone loves the quarterback and we can’t stand to see them get hurt because without the superstars what’s the point in watching.
The NFL makes it a priority to protects its players and I’m all for it, but there is clearly a little bias to the offensive players because they’re the reason people watch.
If that’s going to be the case then make it fair for the defense and just put a flag on the quarterback which once pulled will rule the play dead. Once we get to that point, the true game of football will be gone forever.
So how can the NFL resolve this issue?
JUST DON’T CALL THE PENALTY!
The same way the NFL Competition Committee announced that officials wouldn’t call the head-to-head contact rule with such frequency, they should do the same in this sense.
It’s simple physics that tackling someone to the ground will require the bodyweight of said player to bring down any player.
Well, then how the hell are they going tackle. It’s simple physics that if you tackle someone correctly, you will naturally put body weight into the tackle.
It’s mind-numbingly stupid and making a sham of the physicality this sport used to bring.
Yes, everyone loves the fireworks of high scoring football games. You’re never bored and its big play after big play.
This will change in time. This evolution of offense will eventually lead to the fans yearning for the days of clean tackling and fair officiating.
The NFL is getting soft, and it’s only a matter of time before we’ll be watching players pull flags off of each other’s hips on Sundays.
