If you can find a quote where I say the coin toss is unfair anywhere in this thread I applaud you. Good luck.
That said, again, it isn't that the coin toss is unfair, it is that an overtime that heavily favors the winner of the coin toss is unfair. Why should such a key game be decided by something so trivial as a coin toss?
Unfortunately, the Chiefs lost the game for many reasons, most of their own making. Sure, if the phantom roughing the passer call had not been made, the game may have ended differently but there is no way of knowing that for sure. Nerves got Mahomes in the first half - he overthrew his receiver (or the receiver didn't run far enough ) on what would have been a touchdown pass early in the game. Lining up offsides was the real killer. I feel really bad for Dee Ford for this. But, honestly, how hard is it to look down the line and make sure you aren't lined up offsides? I'm ok with a player jumping offsides but lining up offsides shouldn't happen.
I think I'll be watching for the commercials this year - hopefully, they will be better than they have been the last few years.
eta - Our defense was not good most of the year. Defense coordinator was fires. Fingers crossed that we get a good one.
So true. For a million dollars a second one would expect EMMY level ideas. Give us humor. Give us Clydesdales and Dalmatians. There is a reason a chunk of the public switches over to the Puppy Bowl halftime on Animal Planet.
Right on! Start the OT like it is the beginning of a game and play an extra quarter. If it is still tied just keep playing until sudden death. At the very least make sure both teams get an offensive possession. For instance, the Chiefs get a kickoff, but if they fumble it away - game over, but if not they have to score a TD to match what the Pats did. That's just a few seconds of thought. If we were getting paid millions to come up with the rules we could make the game better than it is. The catch / not a catch thing is baffling. Why was this so simple from 1920's - 1980's at least. Just treat it like a running play. If you break the plane with the ball - touchdown. Talk about overthinking things. Are kids now having these arguments on the playgrounds or are they just playing Madden now because I haven't seen a kid playing outside in years. Now if you'll excuse me I need to get back to my newspaper.
Lots of good stuff here. Here are my thoughts:
On replay, the reason that the refs are on the field is that historically that was the best way to watch the play for infractions. Unfortunately with multiple TV cameras and slow-mo replay, that is no longer true. So while I would probably advocate adding another on-field official, I think there should also be a "TV official" that is watching each game and calling penalties/out of bounds/catches vs drops/etc in real time. If that speeds teams up who want to start the next play before the TV guy can chime in, I'm fine with that result.
I would also make everything, including penalties, reviewable with the same coach challenge rules. I would require coaches to specify what they want reviewed and not allow a blanket review (ie they could say "the left tackle was holding on that play" but not "just review the entire line as I think there was holding somewhere"). That said, I would limit all reviews to 90 seconds. If you can't figure it out in that time period, then the call on the field stands and the game moves on.
On overtime, I would go with a 10 minute extra period, and if no one is ahead at the end of that I would go with the "baseball" option with the home team going last. Under the baseball option you play normal football for two possessions, and if the score is still tied you play two more (like extra inning baseball) until there is a score differential at the end of a set of 2 possessions. So if team 1 takes the kickoff and scores a FG, if team 2 doesn't score they lose, if they score a FG it starts over again, if they score a TD they win.
This is getting funny. First you suggest that deciding who gets first possession in OT by a coin toss is equivalent to not playing the game at all (ignoring the fact that the teams actually, you know, played the game for four quarters and ended up tied). Now you suggest adding another timed period, and then, if it’s tied, giving whoever has possession when time runs out the chance to win with a field goal.
That is much worse than the current set up, where each team has exactly the same odds of getting the first possession on OT. I like the tweak they made to the defending team a shot to tie or win of the offense scores a field goal on the first possession.
But the NFL has figured this part out just fine. The areas where they have issues are judgement calls — spotting the ball, detemining a catch, calling a touchdown. If there is improvement to be made, that is where they should focus. Not adopting odd schemes to fix something that isn’t broke.
All kinds of good ideas. I still think, regarding the Saints debacle, that I would have had respect for that oaf Roger Goodell had he run down onto the field, or called someone from his Command Center, and just hollered "no, no, no, I don't care what the rules on replay are, that was pass interference and I so call it by virtue of the power vested in me by Jerry Jones and a bunch of other wealthy old geezers). Would anyone have thought that improper (besides the Rams)?
Let's be honest, even a Rams fan would admit it was pass interference (and an improper head-to-head hit as well, but that is more subjective). They might say "those are the breaks" or "sure but the refs also didn't call xxxx and yyyy earlier in the game" but no sane person can watch that play and say it was not interference.
I say all this as a Falcon's fan who hates the Saints. If the Super Bowl in Atlanta had been Saints vs. Pats, we might have imploded Arthur Blank's gorgeous new stadium just to prevent those two teams from coming into our back yard for it.
-Jason "you think I am kidding, but sportsradio in Atlanta has been apoplectic in anticipation of a Saints/Pats Super Bowl" Evans
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Yeah, but now we have the Pats and the Rams...yuck. I could have easily pulled for the Rams if they were still in St. Louis, but I no longer like them because
a) I don't like pulling for LA teams.
b) I don't like teams that move*
*Teams that moved long enough ago that I don't have any real memories of them being in their former city get a pass from me
I was alive but too young to care (or even be aware of such things, really). The Rams also suffer (in terms of whether I like them or not) from the NFL allowing two teams to move to LA. All the moving around (Chargers, Rams, Raiders) with two of the teams moving to the same city has left me more strongly anti-moving than I used to be. Had only the Rams and not the Chargers moved to LA, the Rams might still have been among the list of teams I'll casually pull for instead of actively pull against.
I don't much care who wins, but have a strong feeling the evil genius Belichick will confound the wandering Rams. This is what he does. Will be impressed if the Boy Wonder outcoaches him.
I'm old enough to remember the Chicago Cardinals, the St. Louis Hawks, the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Minneapolis Lakers and the Syracuse Nationals, among others.
But not old enough to remember when the Baltimore Orioles moved to New York and became the Highlanders. So, I guess I can still root for the Yankees.
But seriously, darn near every franchise older than a few decades has moved somewhere along the line.
I think it is a timing thing. There were no relocations from 1998-2015. I was fairly old when I got into watching football, and even older when I started following the NFL, probably around 2005 or 2006. So (for me) it is unusual. It is interesting that the moves seem to come in clusters, with long gaps in between which means that depending on when you are born you might consider team moves a common occurrence (because it happened frequently in your formative years) or a rarity (because your formative years occurred during the gaps). The NFL clusters seem to be early 60s, early-mid 80s, mid 90s, and then our current time period (mid-late 2010s).
I don't think it is quite as common as you suggest in your last line, though. I'm not diving deep enough to count teams and tally up who moved and who didn't based on age, but just an eye test on the length of the lists of moves for the various leagues tells me there haven't been enough moves for that to be possible...I would guess less than half of teams established 30+ years ago have moved although of course some of those have moved multiple times.
good to see former Blue Devil (not long enough, sadly) Ben Watson ripping into Roger Goodell for his silence...very eloquent dismissal of the pompous czar.
p.s. can you imagine the forces at work had the aggrieved party been the Cowboys and Jerry Jones?
I think the NFL's new overtime is far superior to the old one, in that under the old scheme, a field goal ended the game and the other team never got a chance to possess the ball. In that system, the coin toss took on even more importance; too much importance, in my opinion.
I'm ok with the current overtime, and I'm not sure any of the proposed "solutions" is any better than the current system.
"We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world." --M. Proust