Football is over

Now that the Super Bowl is over, we can all focus on NCAA basketball for the next 2 months. Whats that you say? They still have the Pro Bowl this weekend? Well the Pro Bowl is about as exciting as watching the Antiques Roadshow on PBS. The last exciting thing to happen in the Pro Bowl was this:




After that hit they should have adopted a rule that you can't run a fake punt in the Pro Bowl. On the topic of rule changes since the season is over, here are a couple of things that Roger Goodell should consider.

1) Why in God's lovely green earth is it a 15 yard penalty for a facemask on defense, yet on offense a ball carrier can rip your helmet off with a stiff arm? During the Super Bowl Rogers-Cromartie got a face mask penalty while Santonio Holmes was performing the previously mentioned stiff arm. Cromartie couldn't even see Holmes because his head was being pushed back so far. Every ball carrier now puts his hand directly on the tackler's facemask as soon as the defender is within arms reach and this is completely legal? I call BS!

2) The five yard contact rule should be extended to ten yards. It's bad enough that corners and safeties get flagged for any deep pass play that has contact, so they should be allowed a little more room to push receivers off routes. Either do this, or create an illegal contact on receivers who push off after five yards. Receivers already have the advantage of knowing the play and where the ball is going to be thrown, but now in the NFL you basically have to let them catch it too. If a corner can't make contact, then a receiver shouldn't be able to either. Offensive Pass Interfernce should be called more.

3) I understand that teams pay a lot of money to their quarterbacks, so to protect their investment, the NFL started calling roughing the passer more often, but this shit has gotten out of hand. Do you really expect a defensive end who weighs 250 pounds and runs a 4.5 forty to be able to stop his speed rush in one step. Either give them another step or just put quaterbacks in red jerseys and make it two hand touch like practice. I think NFL officials are intelligent enough to determine if a defensive player could stop his momentum before he clobers a quarterback. This must secretly drive quarterbacks from the 80's and 90's crazy. Troy Aikman would still be playing right now if games were called the way they are now. Instead I have to see Kurt Warner's tired ass every 15 minutes for two weeks on TV, and I have to listen to an overly concussed Aikman babble on and on about Warner without making any sense. Does this seem unfair to anyone else?

4) They need to change the rule for holding, because if you go by the what the definition of holding really is, then this occurs on every damn play. Offensive lineman grab jerseys, they hook one arm around defensive lineman all of the time. This is only called when it is extremely blatant or an official is bored and wants to kill a drive. I blame this on Fred Miller, because if he was not allowed to get away with a hold on almost every play, then their would never have been a quarterback controversy in Chicago 2 years ago because Rex Grossman would have been dead. It would have worked out for the Bears though because they would just march down the field with all of the roughing the passer penalties. That would have been the best offensive scheme that Ron Turner has ever come up with.

5) Why is there only booth reviews in the last 2 minutes of a half? This makes no sense what so ever. Basically the NFL is saying that they could care less what happens during the rest of the game, but we want to cover the officials asses in the last 2 minutes of the game so we don't get crucified for a blown call by the media and fans after the game. Do it like college does and have the replay booth buzz the official if a play seems like it was called wrong. Why is it so difficult for people to admit that they made a damn mistake?

6) Please place cameras in the pylons so that there is actually an angle straight down the goal line. I'm pretty sure that cameras are small enough now that you can actually place them there, so this will save us time during reviews of touchdowns instead of using the camera that is planted on the Goodyear blimp that is flying above the stadium. You have a camera in a blimp, there is a series of wires above the stadium that control a camera that gives you every possible angle of every worthless play, yet when it comes to crossing the goal line, we have a guy standing 15 yards away at a 45 degree angle with a Sony camcorder as our only evidence.

Basically the NFL took a page out of the NBA's handbook and made the rules favor the offense. Why? Because people want to see scoring, not shutouts, but it has gone too far. The game was fine 20 years ago, but now the NFL has become too dependant on the likes of Tom Brady and Peyton Manning to allow anything to change. That is why Kurt Warner can play football until he is 50 and make the Hall of Fame, but the NFL life span of a running back is about the same as a gallon of milk in a broken fridge.