Roughing the Passer - Rule Change Idea

[cddolphin]

Remember the good ole days of the 90s, when facemask penalties could either be called as intentional (15 yards, personal foul) or unintentional (5 yards)?

Why not bring that back for roughing the passer?

You drive your head into his chin, or lower with the crown, dive at his knee, or WWE slam him, then it's a 'flagrant' 15 yards.

If you're trying to swat the ball and your fingers graze his helmet, if you don't "adequately" re-distribute your body weight within a fraction of a second as your 300lbs body moving 18mph is in mid-air, if you graze the QB a quarter second after the ball is released and he tumbles to the turf like a delicate flower.. those would be 5 yard, no automatic-first down penalties.

 

Thoughts? Good idea? Terrible idea? Bad idea but better than what we have now?

[theJ]

Probably just makes it harder to officiate, and won't eliminate any controversy.  

And there was a reason they got rid of the intentional/unintentional thing.  It was always a controversy.  

[cddolphin]

6 minutes ago, theJ said:

And there was a reason they got rid of the intentional/unintentional thing.  It was always a controversy.  

I get that for *adding* rules, but in this case I'd rather risk a bit of controversy for a chance to make the call less impactful at least some of the time.

15 yards sometimes, 5 yards sometimes, chance for some controversy >>>>> 15 yards no matter what

[Jakuvious]

Really they just need to go back and remove the non-sense about landing with their full weight on a QB or driving a QB into the ground or whatever it is officially. The rest of it is fine. I can even accept the roughing the passer penalties where a QB takes an arm to the helmet. Sure, fine. Just get rid of the regular tackle = roughing if the refs are feeling flag happy bit.

And they'll never go back to a 5/15 split. At least not anytime soon. Probably the second biggest trend in rule changes after player safety has been removing judgment calls from the game. It's why they eliminated the 5/15 split for facemasks, it's why they got rid of the force out rule on out of bounds catches, and it's the reason for like 90% of the constant changes to the catch rules. They'd rather have people upset about the rule but be able to say hey, they refs called it right, than have to deal with the controversy of a rule that allows a call to be correct and incorrect at the same time.

[diamondbull424]

They just need to change the rules. The most exciting play on defense outside of the pick 6 and safety, is the QB sack. The NFL by catering to the QB too much is ruining the excitement of great defense and thus the product itself.

Adding the extra controversy is a bad idea. Because it’ll only buy the NFL time to keep this rule in play just with a slightly different enforcement. Whereas if fans continue to be in uproar over this rule, there is a chance (however slight) that the NFL will be forced to adjust the verbiage of the rule to something that isn’t so heavily enforced.

Edited September 25, 2018 by diamondbull424

[AFlaccoSeagulls]

20 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

They just need to change the rules. The most exciting play on defense outside of the pick 6 and safety, is the QB sack. The NFL by catering to the QB too much is ruining the excitement of great defense and thus the product itself.

Adding the extra controversy is a bad idea. Because it’ll only buy the NFL time to keep this rule in play just with a slightly different enforcement. Whereas if fans continue to be in uproar over this rule, there is a chance (however slight) that the NFL will be forced to adjust the verbiage of the rule to something that isn’t so heavily enforced.

Couldn't agree more with this. Too much regulation of the sack has gotten us to this point in time. I understand the league wants to protect the QB's because ultimately a game where top QB's are constantly hurt damages the product and ultimately revenues, but doing what they're doing now is just pathetic.

[Nabbs4u]

It's not going anywhere. The last thing the NFL wants is another Rodgers type injury to a markee QB ala Mahomes next week. If that results in BS RTP calls here or there so be it, at least we're not watching Brett Hundley waste an entire season at QB.

Yes the NFL has been making hits like these for decades but they have also never made or lost as much money because of these injuries either. The NFL has been and will always be about the Money and Shield!

[MWil23]

We are living in a day and age where a textbook tackle/sack to the mid-section/torso of a player is actually illegal. It's an awful rule and overreaction. Just wait until playoffs/leading up to the playoffs when it happens...how you're supposed to sack Cam, Ben, and others is beyond me. Especially Ben/Cam, who having running built into the gameplan (Cam) or scrambling/improvising (Ben). It's going to be a train wreck, worse than it already is, which is saying something. It's RIDICULOUS. 

[diamondbull424]

1 minute ago, AFlaccoSeagulls said:

Couldn't agree more with this. Too much regulation of the sack has gotten us to this point in time. I understand the league wants to protect the QB's because ultimately a game where top QB's are constantly hurt damages the product and ultimately revenues, but doing what they're doing now is just pathetic.

What’s more top QBs are still finding ways to get hurt. So over policing the defense hasn’t led to a regression in QB injuries, it’s only led to a regression in QB toughness.

[diamondbull424]

3 minutes ago, MWil23 said:

We are living in a day and age where a textbook tackle/sack to the mid-section/torso of a player is actually illegal. It's an awful rule and overreaction. Just wait until playoffs/leading up to the playoffs when it happens...how you're supposed to sack Cam, Ben, and others is beyond me. Especially Ben/Cam, who having running built into the gameplan (Cam) or scrambling/improvising (Ben). It's going to be a train wreck, worse than it already is, which is saying something. It's RIDICULOUS. 

Those were the two players that came to mind. If the NFL doesn’t want defenders to destroy QBs than they have to change the rules. A sack occurs whenever a defender wraps up a QB. They don’t need to take them to the ground. QBs are equally not allowed to continue a play when contact with a defender occurs... because it’s for their safety, continuing the play could get them seriously hurt. ??

[MWil23]

3 minutes ago, diamondbull424 said:

Those were the two players that came to mind. If the NFL doesn’t want defenders to destroy QBs than they have to change the rules. A sack occurs whenever a defender wraps up a QB. They don’t need to take them to the ground. QBs are equally not allowed to continue a play when contact with a defender occurs... because it’s for their safety, continuing the play could get them seriously hurt. ??

YEP.

If the NFL is going to implement such a ridiculous and garbage rule, then they should just put QB's in red jerseys and blow it dead as soon as they're wrapped. These QB's can't have it both ways.

[Jakuvious]

12 minutes ago, Nabbs4u said:

It's not going anywhere. The last thing the NFL wants is another Rodgers type injury to a markee QB ala Mahomes next week. If that results in BS RTP calls here or there so be it, at least we're not watching Brett Hundley waste an entire season at QB.

Yes the NFL has been making hits like these for decades but they have also never made or lost as much money because of these injuries either. The NFL has been and will always be about the Money and Shield!

So, here's my question on this line of logic, though. Do these penalties actually deter those injuries? Because I don't feel like there's been much change in how defenders are actually hitting QBs based on the Rodgers rule. The helmet rule, the going low rule, those changed things because they're avoidable ways to tackle a QB, but the new rule this year really doesn't give them much to do. They're trying to figure out how to follow it and most of them don't seem to know how to or be able to. So I don't feel like this enforcement will prevent any injuries, at best it's just going to punish the player who injured somebody after the fact, which doesn't really do anyone any good.

[DLF54927]

Can't they just go back to the "in the grasp" days?

I see why they only care about protecting QBs. Just look at those four SF primetime games coming up that are now complete dogs without Jimmy G.

[NJerseypaint]

If they want to have the rule this way they just need to change the penalty. Keep the loss of down but add 10 yards to the play or something like that cause free firsts is going to get ridiculous. We're gonna be having QBs diving everywhere and defensive players who are too scared to ever tackle the QB in key game moments. It's spoiling the product.

[Mox]

Roughing the passer was perfectly fine in the mid 2000's. Go back to that except include helmet to helmet hits under the definition. Then make it so there is no such thing as roughing the passer while they still have the ball (again outside of helmet to helmet and facemask). A sack is not roughing the passer.