Football is a naturally violent game, and the league has tried to make it safer with a new rule change for the 2018 season. The NFL owners have approved a rule change that would make it illegal for a player to lead with their head to make contact with an opponent. The specific verbiage won’t be decided until May, but essentially this is the targeting rule seen in college football. While the sentiment behind the rule change is just, the new NFL targeting rule misses the mark.
New NFL Targeting Rule Is Off-Course
It Defies Anatomy, Physics
While it’s obviously good to minimize head-to-head contact, that type of collision will always be part of the game. The main reason for that is basic human anatomy. Any time a human being leans forward, their head will always be in front. Since football players need to constantly be leaning towards the play, this means that their head will naturally always be leading.
Sure, on some plays they’ll have time to adjust, but football is an incredibly fast game. These players are going up against some of the fastest and quickest athletes in the world, and expecting any player to adjust in milliseconds to an opposing player is absurd. The brain and body cannot react fast enough to always get out of the way.
The NFL wants players to lead with their shoulder, but there’s a slight problem with that. The neck is very close on the body to the shoulder, which means that if a defender slightly misses their tackle, they’re leading with the head. This sounds like a very straightforward point, and that’s because it is. This rule goes against the laws of both human anatomy and physics.
It Can’t Be Effectively Enforced
Since incidental helmet-to-helmet contact will always be part of the game, the league has two choices on how to handle the issue. It could either call a penalty every single time or make it a judgement call. Regardless of which method wins out, the sport loses.
If they call it every single time, games will never end. The NFL already has a pacing problem due to a recent uptick in flags, and this rule only makes that problem worse. Officials would throw flags basically every play, and games would go on forever. Drives would stall constantly, and the game quality as a whole would be drastically impacted.
Making it a judgement call could be even worse. The NFL already has a wide variety of “judgement call” rules that have too big on an impact on the game. Ultimately, the game should be decided by the players, not the refs, an issue the league had already been working on.
The league had just changed the controversial catch rule in order to take out the gray area in the rule. The NFL is currently working on minimizing the impact of pass interference on the game, because they recognized the rule was having too big of an impact on the game.
The targeting rule, if enforced on a case-by-case basis, goes against everything the league has been trying to do. Allowing the referees to hand out 15-yard penalties at random for plays that happen every single game is just asking for trouble. There’s enough convoluted rules in football, the NFL doesn’t need another.
The Punishment Is Too Severe
While this rule wouldn’t be smart in any circumstance, it wouldn’t be that bad if it were just a five-yard penalty. These type of contacts are going to happen regardless, so a hefty penalty doesn’t make sense.
Nonetheless, the NFL has attached a significant penalty to this rule. Officials will penalize players 15 yards any time they lower their helmet to initiate contact. While a five-yard penalty is a minor nuisance teams can overcome, a 15-yard penalty is a game changer. Drives are made and stalled over penalties like that, and it’s not hard to imagine a games outcome being decided by this rule.
However, the rule gets even worse. While the targeting rule carries a hefty penalty, the referees can also eject players. How the ejection process works is unknown, but let’s assume it works the same way as a personal foul. If this is the case, then two targeting penalties would lead to an ejection.
For a play as incidental as this targeting rule, this is unforgivable. If the refs are flag-happy, not only would they be affected the outcome of the game, but they’d be removing the best players from the field. This drastically effects the integrity of the game, and would only create angry, upset fans.
The NFL is right to try to limit head injuries, but this is not the way to go about it. Football is a physical, fast-paced game, and some contact is unavoidable. This rule spits in the face of anatomy and physics, cannot be effectively enforced, and carries too strict a punishment. Football has enough convoluted rules already, adding another would only damage the product.
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