NFL Rules Are Just Suggestions

[Muda69]

https://deadspin.com/nfl-rules-are-just-suggestions-1838409707

Quote

Tom Brady was watching Titans-Jaguars Thursday night and, like every other person with functional eyes, did not enjoy the experience. Only he overcame his revulsion and fear of being found out, tweeting about it and saying all the holding penalties were ruining his fun.

Two days later, Al Riveron, the National Football League’s designated human shield interpreting both the officials and the drunk Jackson Pollock painting the league calls its rulebook, called his small platoon of referees and said, “Okay, we have to knock off calling the thing we told you to call three weeks ago.” And good soldiers that they are, the officials did that, lowering the number of Sunday holding calls by nearly half.

This suggests one of two things:

(1) Tom Brady is the actual commissioner of football and may as well get Roger Goodell’s paycheck while the Ginger Avenger gets sent to a $55 million-and-over retirement community in upstate New York to kick up his feet and laugh at the next miserable bastard who has to take Jerry Jones’s 3 a.m. calls.

(2) The NFL is just making this up as it goes along and actually has no rules at all, but suggestions that come and go at a whim because the people in charge of presenting football don’t understand football at all.

I desperately want it to be (1) because of the face Bill Belichick will make the first time he is asked about Brady as his boss. Galaxies will implode with the force of his expression of disgust.

Sadly, though, the true answer is (2). The NFL changes rules every year; that we know, because we laugh at their inability to keep up with their most diabolical coaches. They’ve tried and failed with lowering the head, roughing the passer, and illegal contact before that. But de-emphasizing “points of emphasis” after two weeks, and doing it with a simple conference call a day before a full round of games is the real inside look at how the league works. The NFL, as it turns out, is the shrugging stick figure emoji with expensive suits, with a nuclear fueled ATM attached.

And no, it really doesn’t matter at this point whether de-emphasizing the lobster block prohibition made for better or worse games. It’s that the league has no earthly idea what is or isn’t watchable athletic entertainment is any more, and changes ideas on the fly because it only took two weeks for their alleged good intentions to be mocked and spat upon by smarter and more cunning entrepreneurs with whistles.

Here’s the process: League changes rule, or offers a new POE (point of emphasis) applied to an old or slightly modified rule. Coaches read rule/POE, immediately start imagining ways to circumvent or neuter rule/POE. Strategies are applied. Games become shambolic. High-powered quarterback tweets out his revulsion. League abandons plan in frustration.

It is to the business’s credit that it can convince football fans that this is actually a good thing. Being flexible in the face of failure, fixing problems on the fly and trying to serve the audience above all other conditions—it’s a brilliant bit of spin, no question, and the number of people upon whom that spin works is truly staggering.

But it also proves yet again that football is really just the art of throwing stuff against the wall, studying the spatter pattern, and then getting rid of the stuff it brought for throwing. When John Elway shamed Denver tackle Garett Bolles for his high number of holding penalties with the inspirational pep talk, “Does he know what holding is? Does he know what he can and can’t do?” it turned out that the answer was, “No more or less than the people who wrote the rule in the first place.” Put another way, does Bolles get dispensation for violating a rule the league’s rulemakers clearly didn’t understand and essentially abandoned two weeks later?

Maybe acknowledging a screw-up is noble, but the people who couldn’t navigate the arcaneries of a “catch” and are spectacularly cavalier about the concussion protocol shouldn’t get a lot of lead here. It’s far more likely that they simply don’t know what the hell they’re doing and have a work philosophy of “We’ll just wait until someone yells at us.”

But at least with this latest example, they know who’s doing the yelling, and who got the job of fixing the problem done. And Sunday in Buffalo, I fully expect the referee to ask at one point, “So you good with that call?” And Tom Brady will nod silently. I mean, why wait for Al Riveron’s two cents when the boss is right there?

Sounds about right.   Do referee's get paid good money in the NFL, because I don't know if I could handle such wishy-washy rules.

 

[Coach Nowlin]

I want to see something changed about the 1 yard LOS pick play that is impossible to defend 

Well its possible, but it seems like NFL defense are O-fer in defending it in the last 2 weeks of my 7 hours of Red Zone channel watching it. 

[JustRules]

NFL official  are paid fairly well but also put in considerable time each week preparing for games. I'm not sure of exact or current numbers, but my understanding was a first year official is paid around $60k per year and a 20-year veteran working referee is making around $200k.

As for the rule and changes in season, the rule itself didn't change but the philosophy or application of the rule likely did. I was talking with one of the NFL guys here in Indy and he said they were being told to be much more technical on the backside holding because these are freak athletes and if they aren't held on the back side they could possibly still get to the runner and make a play. I have no idea if that's the philosophy they changed that reduced the number of fouls in week 3, but it's an example of what could easily change during the season. Another example is a hold at or near the tackle. That rarely has an impact on the play and is generally considered a no call. But if the NFL told the officials early to call it they will. If they did that's possibly what could have been pulled back as well. There are probably similar examples to that I"m not privvy to and likely the source of the conversation on the conference call.