A majority of NFL house owners, together with Giants co-owner John Mara, ignored the opposition of the league’s coaches and gamers on Tuesday and handed a controversial measure to restrict kick returns.
The new rule will enable groups to mechanically obtain a primary down at their very own 25-line in the event that they fair-catch a kickoff or free kick behind their 25.
Commissioner Roger Goodell and the house owners had the audacity to quote “player safety” as the explanation for the brand new rule after growing the common season lately to 17 video games, voting in March to schedule groups as much as twice on Thursdays, and voting on Monday to permit Thursday Night Football flexing between Weeks 13 and 17.
The hypocrisy is an excessive amount of for the league’s many critics on this situation.
“Extremely disappointed,” one coach instructed the Daily News on Tuesday. “‘Player safety’ is what they want, and then you flex Thursday night games late in the year?!?! It doesn’t make sense to me. Player safety?!?!”
There is a sliver of hope that the brand new kickoff rule gained’t be everlasting, because it was solely handed on a one-year trial foundation on Tuesday.
However, optimism is low as a result of this initiative is seen as a continuation of the NFL’s image-based response to concussions within the wake of the mishandling of Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa early final season.
Competition committee chairman Rich McKay’s use of school soccer knowledge in help of the rule change on Tuesday made coaches and gamers shake their heads.
As The News reported Monday, the NFL’s medical doctors cited one season’s price of Pac-12 knowledge throughout current conferences as proof of why this might produce comparable ends in the professionals.
“We did this rule for one year only because we really do want to get more to a long-term solution, and maybe that long-term solution includes having more returns in the game and just trying to make the play safer,” McKay stated, in accordance with NFL Network. “The play has its challenges due to area and pace, and we’ve simply received to search out methods to mitigate that and attempt to get the play again within the sport.
“No one wants to get rid of special teams,” McKay added. “Special teams is a critical part of our game. … We now need to find a way to try to revolutionize the rule, if we can, in a way to get the kick return back in the game.”
That’s straightforward for McKay to say, however what’s going to this rule change imply for gamers such because the Giants’ Cam Brown, Carter Coughlin and Gary Brightwell — gamers whose worth is tied partly or largely to their work on kickoffs?
That’s simply considered one of many unintended penalties coaches and gamers consider might end result from this rule change.
Coaches and gamers completely researched final season’s spike in concussions from 12 to 19 in kickoffs, and so they discovered just one was sustained by a returner, whereas lots of the performs wouldn’t have been modified or impacted by this new rule.
The coaches and gamers prioritize security, clearly. But they consider squibbed, knuckled or skied kicks to keep away from honest catches and acquire a bonus on protection might end in much more chaotic collisions, as nicely.
Tuesday’s precise vote wasn’t instantly recognized, however it was discouraging as a result of coaches and gamers had approached some house owners in current weeks to protest the competitors committee’s rule proposal.
Some of these house owners then spoke up in Monday’s assembly, which delayed the vote into Tuesday. And getting into Monday night time, there was a perception that at the least 5 or 6 house owners deliberate to vote in opposition to the rule because of the data they’d obtained.
But they wanted 9 ‘no’ votes, and so they didn’t get them.
Players who deliberate to launch a public assertion denouncing the rule have been discouraged behind the scenes from doing so, and the concern of 1 coach got here true on Tuesday:
A significant rule change handed with no consultants on the precise sport of soccer within the room.
“For the first time I can ever remember, you have coaches and players unanimously agreeing against a rule, and it is being completely ignored,” the coach stated Monday. “And they’re making a rule with no one in the room to actually speak for the game: coaches, GMs. Anybody.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com