Tuesday Afternoon Linebacker

We’re introducing a new feature here at TALB, “The Spread”. It’s basically a dumping ground for football news. During the (at this point ever decreasing) off-season it should be the most regular item. While the season is in full swing, not as much. As you can guess, this edition will lead with a story that you may be familiar with.

Favre From Gracious
Last time out, TALB had a thing or two to say about Numero Quatro and his quixotic attempt to return to The League. At the time I thought it couldn’t get worse, or that anything would even come of this flirtation with returning. But after some posturing, alleged tampering, and a truck load of cash things are no where near settled. In fact, the latest rumor to emerge from the ‘Tubes indicates that Packers management has damn near given up, and will trade His Lord Egoness to the aforementioned Vikes.

For the love of Vince Lombardi, ride off into the sunset man. You are a distraction for the Packers, and a disruption for the NFL. The only good thing is that the Favre-saga has taken SportsCenter’s unwavering attention away from the Yankees and Red Sox for a few minutes.

Nice Work NFL
There will be some new rule changes for the NFL this season. All, in TALB’s opinion, will make the game better.

The “football move” thing never made any sense to me. If you have two hands on the ball, you’ve caught it. Regardless if you put your foot down (in bounds of course), take a step, or any other damn thing. Sanity, it’s a wonderful thing. I’m also a big fan of the elimination of the incidental face mask. If you can’t handle a hand in front of your face, get out of pro football.

It’s been quite unfair that the officials can, at their judgment, call a reception in or out. I think its much better to allow receivers and defenders to make great plays either by pushing the receiver at the right time, or being able to drag your toes and keep them on the green side.

Allowing field goal attempts to be reviewed is a no brainer.

I was actually confused about the whole deferring the decision deal. I mean I never understood the mechanics of the decision. For those who are similarly in the dark is a quick summary of what goes on with the coin toss. The winner of the initial coin toss is simply winning the opportunity to decide what to do before the opponent. By deferring, the opponent now gets to make their choice first. Then at the start of the second half, the team that won the opening toss now has to make their decision first.

An example may clear that up. It’s the Bucs versus the Falcons. The ‘Birds call heads and the coin comes up heads. At this point (using the new rules) Atlanta can do one of the following: kick, receive, select a goal to defend, or defer their decision. Let’s say they defer, now the Bucs have the option to kick, receive, or select a goal to defend. Then when the second half starts the Falcons are forced to choose between kicking, receiving, or selecting a goal to defend.

Up until now, in the NFL the conventional wisdom was to take the ball at the start of the game. And that was because at the start of the second half the opponent will very likely elect to receive. So if you elect to kick at the open, you’d likely end up kicking to start the second half as well. Expect that the NFL will start looking at lot more like college at the coin toss, with the “winner” deferring more often than not.

I’m So Icee
And finally, I am glad that no change was made to the time out rules. During last season there was quite a hue and cry about “last second” time outs called during critical field goal attempts. Even though the number of times it happened was small, and the number of times it actually worked were even fewer the talking heads and interested bloggers started bemoaning the tactic. TALB will grant that it is underhanded, and a good team or coach shouldn’t need to resort to such things (I’m looking at you TTNHBC). But the mechanics of actually creating and enforcing such a rule are problematic at best. How late is too late to call a time out? How can you say that the coaches didn’t see a mis-alignment or the wrong personnel at the last second? About the only thing you could do is allow the officials the latitude to determine intent. And we all know how well that works out.

Bow Wow Wow. Yippie Yo, Yippie Yay
Les Miles + Snoop Dogg = Win. Humpin’ and scrumpin’ indeed.

Got A Tip?
Hell, we’ll take the whole thing.
Send a tip or story to The Spread