We talked about the NFL deciding to loosen up their celebration rules on Tuesday. That’s great, but that’s not the only rule that changed.
The league also formally approved the new rule that will allow two players to return from injured reserve during the season. That was first reported last week.
There were also two more significant changes we haven’t talked about.
First, the league shortened overtime from 15 to 10 minutes. They did so in the name of player safety, which is what they always say when they make dramatic changes to the game.
Anything that gives us less regular season football and more ties, frankly, sucks. We’re not buying the player safety argument, either. There are more certainly many, many more effective ways you could screw with the game to make it more safe.
Knocking five minutes off overtime is going to do nothing.
What the league should do is fix their frickin’ overtime. Go to a college-style format, which is both more exciting and equitable.
It almost seems as if the league just refuses to go that way because they didn’t come up with the idea first. That copying college football would damage too many owner egos.
But I digress.
The other rule change comes in the preseason. Teams will no longer have to trim their rosters to 75 players after the third week of the preseason. Instead, they’ll get to keep all 90 of their players — if they choose — all the way up to the final roster cutdown day.
That should make for quite the cluster the weekend before the season begins.
Overall, it looks like the league got two of these right. One they just can’t figure out how to get right even though the answer is right in front of them and we’ll see on the last one.
Yesterday on Sirius NFL Radio the explanation why the NFL doesn’t want to go to college style format of overtime is because it is considered “hokey” and not close enough to the way football was intended to be played. Play the game for 4 quarters, and then suddenly the rules change and everyone starts out at the 35 yard line. Those were the words of the talking heads on the drive home, Jim Miller I think made the comment, not sure which show it was. Paraphrasing that a bit, but you get the gist.
There was also talk about why the rules were changed with regard to injured reserve. Because some teams were gaming the system. Better make damn sure this guy is really finished for the season since once he hits inured reserved he’s done. Doubt this change is going diminish any of that. The only difference is these billionaires figured out they may as well get some return on their investments rather than pay for players who can’t contribute. After all it was their own self imposed rules that were hurting their wallets.
I like the no cuts until final roster cut day option. And relaxing on the stupid celebration rules. I prefer the Barry Sanders style with handing the ball to the ref, but Chad Johnson had some pretty funny celebrations. If players want to draw attention to themselves for being idiots or being entertaining/imaginative, have at it. As long as players aren’t taunting their opponents, this change was overdue.
The overtime rules were changed because the league loves Aaron Rodgers Hail Marys.
College OT SUX. The simple answer is to do what every other major sport does and have another period with the same rules. 10 minutes would be perfect. No sudden death or stupid rules to make sudden death fair. Just play 10 more minutes and highest score wins. If still tied, take a tie. No big deal.
The one thing about going into the final preseason game with 90 or a couple less is teams will probably keep most of their projected backup guys (along with starters) for the 53 on the bench as much as possible. Keep them fresh and injury free, as much as can be expected for the start of the regular season. It may make for some sloppier than normal final pre season games. You can guarantee all the guys playing will be going all out to try and get the teams to give them a opportunity for a practice squad position, or another chance. Could make for some physical final preseason games.
As usual Howard, you done got it right again.
In recent years, we’ve seen the starters (especially star players) play diminish at a rapid pace in the pre-season. When the starters do actually play, it’s usually at about 60% effort. Kind of like a Pro-Bowl game. No one wants any starters getting injured in pre-season, which is understandable.
With that said, can pre-season football become any more boring? I still get hyped for pre-season, i guess mainly because i know the seasons about to start. So i do watch the games, but other than checking out your team’s draft picks, it’s a snoozer. Some may enjoy it, i usually can’t wait till it gets here, then after the 1st game, i find myself waiting for pre-season to be over.
Don’t kid yourself about “player safety” being the motivation for the decision to change overtime from 15 to 10 minutes. This was designed to prevent 12 pm Central/1 pm eastern games from being less likely to extend into the four-o’clock hour when the marquee games are typically scheduled. In other words, it’s about maximizing TV revenue.
Dude… bringing 2 bodies back from IR kicks ass!