The NFL rule book is a complex document with unexplainable guidelines and definitions that even the most seasoned referees have trouble interpreting. Monday night's game Bills/Seahawks game, in which Richard Sherman was allowed, by rule, to plow into Bills kicker Dan Carpenter, was a prime example. It's a horrible rule, but is it the worst?
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The catch rule
The catch rule is like many controversial, real-life issues: Everybody knows something needs to change, but no one knows how to specifically do it. There's no good way to write a catch rule because describing an action that has thousands of different variables is impossible. You can't define art, and you can't define a catch, and no amount of parsing and semantics will change that. As it is, the NFL should just go with the old Potter Stewart rule: “I know it when I see it.”
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Running into the kicker
Is a kicker a football player? Does he put on pads and a helmet? Can you plow into the dude if you block his kick? Yes, yes and yes? Then why is running into him, with the force of someone navigating a crowded bar and accidentally bumping into somebody, a penalty? Roughing the kicker; yeah, that's the real deal. You can't take shots at a stationary target on one leg. Running into the kicker because you dove for the ball then rolled into him? That's just part of the game.
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Every NFL team gets a primetime game
This isn't Oprah. YOU shouldn't get a primetime game (Jacksonville)! YOU shouldn't get a primetime game (Cleveland)! YOU shouldn't get a primetime game, let alone four (Chicago)! The scheduling of primetime games should be a meritocracy (or, in this case of NFC East teams, a nod to East Coast-bias). The NFL's reason for being inclusive is understandable (put every team in the spotlight once and expand fan bases, at least in theory) but when people wonder why ratings for some primetime games are hemorrhaging, the words “Jaguars/Titans” is really all they ever need to know.
Kickoffs
The league has tried to legislate out kickoffs because the plays are, without a doubt, the most dangerous in the sport. But instead of actually doing something about it, the NFL merely enacts rules that discourage them because — I don't know — the off-chance that a kickoff is returned for a touchdown is too exciting to abandon?
Those are great, no argument here. But they don't happen 99.72 percent of the time. The NFL is subjecting players to 2,500 kickoffs for around six or seven touchdowns per season. (The league has averaged 6.33 kickoff TDs since 2013.) Not worth it.
Just ban them, have every team start at the 20 (the 25 is too penal for defenses) and allow teams to line up for onside kicks when they want to. I guess the surprise onside kick would be gone, too, but that mostly would just save coaches from themselves.
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Coaches' challenges
Replay is beyond fixing. Some things are challengeable, some things aren't. Some things are automatically challenged based on the result of the play, some things aren't. Some things are automatically challenged given the time on the scoreboard, some things aren't. But replay is only going to expand, not contract, and since my pie-in-the-sky dream (get rid of it all together) isn't happening, the least the NFL could do is make things fairer for coaches, who get only two challenges per game unless they get both challenges right, in which case they get a bonus one. Every scenario is unfair. Win the first one and you might have only one left if you lose the second. Lose the first and the second automatically becomes your last. The setup discourages coaches from early challenging (which is better for the viewer at home but unfair given the fact that replay exists and is meant to be used). The easy fix: Make it like tennis. You only lose a challenge if you lose a challenge. If you win it, the challenge remains.
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Shoe rules
Nobody likes uniform rules but they're necessary. You can't have a player grafittiing his uniform with various sayings, tributes or designs just because he wants to. Nike pays a lot of money to have that swoosh be prominentantly displayed. It's fine to keep uniforms pristine. But shoes? Who gives a flying flip about shoes? If Antonio Brown wants to honor Arnold Palmer or Cam Newton wants to wear crocodile-skinned cleats or Peyton Manning wants to put on black high tops for Johnny Unitas, let 'em do it. People love seeing what basketball and football players wear in the postgame. They love analyzing tennis outfits. Embrace this.
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Quarterback contact
Over the past 15 years, the NFL has tried to legislate out arbitrary decision-making from refs — even though, at the end of the day, most of their job is arbitrary (you try deciding when to call holding in a game). This has led to flags thrown for penalties of wildly varying degrees. If you pop a quarterback in the helmet, Cam Newton style, it's 15 yards, the same amount of yards it is if you go up to block a pass and your hands accidentally come down on a QB's helmet. That's the same amount of yards you'd get if you went up to the quarterback and just pounded him in the helmet like whack-a-mole. The point is: All penalties are not created equal. The NFL should go back to the days when refs were allowed to make judgment calls about the severity of the penalties they see. If a quarterback gets lightly tapped in the head it doesn't need to be a penalty. If a guy is holding up before a late hit, a ref should have more leeway to decide so. Critics say it'd make the game worse because it puts more power into the hands of officials. Why is that necessarily a bad thing? As we've seen this year, refs seem reluctant to throw flags on such plays because of how important those 15-yard penalties become. Letting them interpret intent would lead to some controversy but also better application of the rules.
Literally every celebration penalty
They've been calling it the No Fun League for decades, but only recently is the NFL truly living up to its billing. Let players have fun with the football after scoring. Let them do a team celebration. If a dude wants to cast an imaginary fishing line to snare a teammate and reel him in, cast that line buddy and catch that beautiful butterfly, pal! Do you have to like when a guy does a dance after a sack in a game in which his team trails by three touchdowns? No. That doesn't mean he shouldn't be allowed to do it.
Yes, there has to be a middle ground — you can't have people doing Simone Biles' floor routine in the end zone. Where is that line? It's somewhere in the middle of Vernon Davis's jump shot and Joe Horn pulling out a cell phone which, along with T.O. signing the football was amazing but understandably frowned upon. The increasing arms race to see who could come up with the best hidden-prop celebration would result in a player pulling a 4K TV and Lazy Boy out from behind the sideline to sit down and watch himself score his touchdown on RedZone.
Not being able to take off your helmet on a score or change of possession is equally bad. The faces of football players are covered! Fans know what the sixth guy off the Cavs or Warriors bench looks like, but if Julio Jones sat down next to them at a restaurant they'd have no idea who he is. Let the guys flash their million-watt smiles! It's simple marketing. All that being said, the Lambeau Leap getting grandfathered in is just garbage.
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Fumbling out of the end zone
Redskins fans remember this one kindly; Ravens fans might lament it as the reason their team missed the playoffs. When an player going for a touchdown fumbles the ball out of the opponent's end zone, possession is transferred and the ball is awarded to the other team. The rule is so simple, which leaves it at odds with its complexity and importance.
This year, it happened on a possible pick-six in the aforementioned intrastate battle of Maryland. Kirk Cousins threw an interception deep in his own territory and Baltimore's C.J. Mosley, who'd picked off the pass, had a clear path to the end zone. He reached out with the ball, as players seeking touchdowns often do, but fumbled before the ball crossed the plane. It bounced out of bounds in the end zone and the Redskins got the ball on their own 20, as per rule. To recap: Cousins throws a pass from his own 3, it's intercepted, the ball is fumbled (caused by no one and recovered by no one), goes out of bounds and the Redskins get it on their own 20, a net gain of 17 yards on a play where the only thing they did was throw an interception.
Why? For what? NFL officiating czar Dean Blandino explained that week:
“Because the goal line is involved — and this is a consistent application of the impetus rule. Impetus is the force that puts the ball into an end zone. So if a team provides the impetus that puts a ball into their opponent’s end zone . . . then they are responsible for it. They’re responsible for it. And if the ball gets out of bounds through the end zone then it is a touchback.”
I watched CNN for 10 hours on election night and didn't hear such absurd, convoluted spin. Had the impetus forced the ball to go out at the 1, it's first-and-goal Baltimore with a yard to go. But because it went of bounds a few feet forward, the entire tenor of the game changes? Stop. It's the worst rule in the NFL. Change it.
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