Revise the NFL rules!

Complaining about football referees is a national pastime that is hardly fun anymore.  Baseball umps screw up too, but with the acceptance of instant replay Major League Baseball has entered the 20^th century when it comes to officiating and may noticeably improve.  Further, with Statcast accurately determining where any object on the field is within less than a millimeter (according to one of the authors of The Only Rule Is It Has To Work), perhaps we are on the verge of eliminating the human element altogether. 

This would have been a good thing in the recent Reds/Cardinals game where the Cardinals won the game on a clearly erroneous call that a ball that went over the outfield fence was not a ground rule double.  The umps refused to use replay because it was a “judgment call.”  Excuse me, but whether your child is ugly is a judgment call; where a batted ball bounces is a matter of fact.  And the fact that the Reds’ manager failed to protest within 30 seconds should not be dispositive as the Reds were running out the season and it was the Giants who were battling the Cards for a playoff spot.

Football is obviously harder to officiate than baseball.  I am sometimes reserved about the use of the word “obviously” but here it applies.  Baseball plays can be anticipated; the defense is stationary and only moves once the ball is struck, and once the ball is struck players move in a predictable manner.  But in football, 22 large men are moving all over the place and refs can only get so close before they get caught up in the action.

Further, the football rule book must look like a phone book.  Baseball has some obscure rules, but by and large baseball rules make sense.  The infield fly rule may seem arbitrary, but it prevents an infielder from turning a double play on a pop up when there is a runner at first.  The football rule book is filled with arcane, arbitrary rules about who can get in a three-point stance and how much balls have to be inflated (although I can’t imagine how that rule could ever affect the outcome of a game).  I still can’t believe that a referee in the Oakland/New England 2001 playoff game knew there was such a thing as the “tuck rule,” a rule that basically says a fumble isn’t a fumble even though the player fumbled.

During the week following a game played on September 24^th, Detroit Lions defensive player Nevin Lawson said that NFL officials had admitted that a record 66-yard pass interference penalty called against Lawson had been wrong.  The apology is nice, but it hardly makes up for the Lions losing the game (not that the Lions should count on winning many games this season).  Pass interference calls can be devastating, because a small infraction (or perceived infraction) can turn a game-winning hold on fourth down into a drive-sustaining first down and place the ball 30 yards or more down the field.

One response to the incorrect pass interference call in the Lion’s game is to call for pass interference to be reviewable.  This would help immeasurably, as the receiver and defender are both moving rapidly and the contact between them can be subtle and hard to discern from a distance.  Again, given the impact on a game the call can have, some back-up is not unwarranted.

As AV Club's Block and Tackle column (in the section on Referee Ron Torbert) points out, under pass interference rules a team can have an infinite number of plays to score after the game is technically over, because a game cannot end on a defensive penalty.  So a team down by one score can just keep sending people deep, not to complete a pass necessarily, but to hope for a pass interference call.

The NFL generally chips away at the rulebook, tweaking the definition of a “catch” (good luck) or lengthening the distance of a point after.  I wonder if the whole thing shouldn’t be reviewed from scratch.  The pass interference rule was adopted at a time when passing was far less important than it is now.  Maybe when it was implemented it wasn’t anticipated that there would be so many pass plays in a game.  And while there is some logic behind the penalty being where the foul occurred, because otherwise a defender who got beat would commit pass interference if it meant a 15-yard penalty instead of a game-losing touchdown, it is not consistent with other penalties.  Basically, the penalty assumes that but for the infraction the pass would have been completed, but that is impossible to know.  On a running play when there is defensive holding, do the refs estimate how far the runner would have gotten before being tackled?  No. 

Other rules should be revisited.  On a kickoff return, why call it back if there is a holding penalty away from the play?  Why not tack on 10 yards to the kickoff?  Brilliant coaches like Bill Belichik have gained an occasional advantage by making use of obscure loopholes in player substitution rules.  Rules regarding proper formations were created during the old “T Formation” era.  Rules about set positions didn’t anticipate players being larger and faster.

Of course most of the rules should be kept, lest football stop looking like football and appear more like Arena Football, or flag football.  One difference between baseball and football is that baseball is largely unchanged in 150 years; modern pro football is a totally different game from that played in the 1960’s and 70’s, not to mention the 1920’s.  I’m sure that a thorough review of all the arcane rules could slim down the rule book and make it easier for refs to know what is going on.

Player safety could also be enhanced if rules were made for modern players using modern equipment and not 160 pound players using leather helmets where the dominant philosophy was “three yards and a cloud of dust.”  New rules are needed for a new era, and the pass-happy NFL is in a new era.