I can\u2019t remember a time in my lifetime of watching sports where fans have been more in tuned with and, more importantly and sometimes disturbingly, emotionally damaged over officiating of their favorite team\u2019s games. The correlation is pretty simple \u2014 with the combination of social media and a million high-definition camera angles, fans have never had more technology and platforms to criticize officiating.<\/p>\n
Along those lines, the role of the National Football League\u2019s prestigious Competition Committee has never been more important, and, like the officials themselves, more scrutinized. For those unfamiliar with the committee, these are several football people, across various job titles, who convene a couple times a year to examine, brainstorm, propose, and vote on rules changes to improve the sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Why am I bringing this up, especially with the NFL scouting combine and free agency soon upon us? Well, we got some Texans-related Competition Committee news late last week, as Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans, along with Vikings head coach Kevin O\u2019Connell, was added to the committee. So the Texans now have a voice! Maybe it will be DeMeco Ryans who can push through legislation that removes Patrick Mahomes\u2019 favored status in borderline roughing the passer calls!<\/p>\n
In all seriousness, adding DeMeco Ryans to the Competition Committee only guarantees one thing. It guarantees that I will be ten times more annoying when I am in DeMeco\u2019s presence, as I hand him my shopping list of rules changes that I would like to see.<\/p>\n
With that in mind, if I were given the chance to propose some changes to the rules and\/or in game operations, here is the short list of my top three that I\u2019d hand to Ryans, and wish him luck pushing them through (Do it for ME, DeMECO!):\u00a0<\/p>\n
Make face mask non-calls reviewable\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since replay review became a thing, several decades ago, the league has been hesitant to allow review to actually invoke a penalty. In other words, if a penalty was missed and not called, the league hasn\u2019t wanted to use replay to apply a penalty, That\u2019s all well and good, but missed face mask calls are massive misses, and here\u2019s the thing \u2014 it\u2019s one of the easiest things to \u201cget right\u201d upon review, and an easy penalty to apply. This needs to happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stop the clock after first downs in the final two minutes of each half<\/p>\n
I\u2019m for any change to clock operation that allows more time for late game comebacks. We\u2019ve begun to see the melding of the college clock rules with the NFL clock rules, with each level taking little things from the other. The one thing the NFL has not done is apply the rule where the clock stops to move the chains after a first down. This used to happen after EVERY first down in college, and they reduced it to the final minutes of each half. I\u2019d like to see the NFL adopt the current college rule, giving these amazing quarterbacks we have right now a tad more leeway in trying to march down the field in the closing minutes of games.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Make defensive pass interference less punitive\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here is another instance of my wanting to see the NFL adopt a college version of a rule. Right now, the NFL rule on defensive pass interference is that it is a spot foul, where the ball is placed at the spot the receiver was interfered with. This leads to some massive 50-50 judgment calls that turn into 40 yard (or more) penalties. That\u2019s too punitive for call that the humans great right half the time.<\/p>\n
In college, pass interference is a 15-yard penalty, period. I know some of you think this will lead to more pass interference penalties downfield \u2014 take the 15 yard penalty, as opposed to the 40 yard completion \u2014 but I don\u2019t find myself complaining about this dynamic when I\u2019m watching college games. I\u2019d even be open to adding a 25-yard pass interference penalty for deep balls downfield. I just hate seeing a game swung by a bad call, where the penalty yardage can be upward\\ of 40 or 50 yards.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I can\u2019t remember a time in my lifetime of watching sports where fans have been more in tuned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642919,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2056],"tags":[19858,3607,7,347,221,253,2368,6,222],"class_list":{"0":"post-772532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-texans","8":"tag-competition-committee","9":"tag-demeco-ryans","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-homepage","12":"tag-houston","13":"tag-houston-texans","14":"tag-houstontexans","15":"tag-nfl","16":"tag-texans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116124077510332283","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/772532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=772532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=772532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}