Brady is happy his bailout pass interference at end of halfs and 4th quarter will remain.

 

That sucks. I was hoping they would make it a standard 15 yd call. Defenses have been getting **** on profusely since the clamp down on PI's in '04.

 

They also, IMO, need to change defensive holding away from the auto first down.

I can see allowing a ref call on a "flagrant" type PI more than 15 yards downfield allowed to be placed at the spot of the foul. However, it would need to be egregious along the lines of tackling. The arm play and hand slapping we see getting called these days is absurd.

 

I'm in favor of making it a standard 15 yard penalty, but also having the officials able to decide that in some situations its deserving of the spot foul. I would also then have the team who committed the obvious foul warned that the next time it happened, the guilty player would be thrown out of the game.

 

Too much power in the hands of the ref. There is no reason for all that, ejections and such for PI. Just keep it the way it is. You don't like it? Don't mug the receiver 40 yards down the field. The rule is fine the way it is.

 

I would actually probably put the power in the hands of the officials at the league office in the replay center. It would mean that things are more likely to be handled as uniformly as possible.

Ticky tack PI calls get the 15 yarder. Obvious, intentional ones get the big penalty. I hate seeing slight penalties give the team the ball at the one yard line for an easy TD, but I also love rules and like to see those who break them on purpose get punished.

 

the refs on the field and the refs in NY can't get things right anyway so lets give them more power? refs need to be trained better and then badell needs to stop telling them what team should win.

 

It's not really giving refs any more power than they have already. It'd be like the yellow/red card system in soccer or the flagrant foul system in basketball - these are not new concepts.

Without a change, hopefully the NFL just directs the refs to just back off the big PI's a bit.

 

I don't think that backing off is the right call though. I certainly don't want to see DBs mugging WRs like they used to.

 

I sure as hell do.

If you're going to continually give any and all advantages to the offense while simultaneously eroding the physical nature of defense with designated strike zones and attempting to eliminate their ability to separate the receiver from the ball via hitting, at least toss them a bone and allow them to get handsy in pass coverage.

 

I’m ok with the rule as it is. I just wish to God what is essentially incidental contact while defending against the pass wasn’t called as PI. Too many times certain quarterbacks get that call in their favor and others don’t.

 

It absolutely gives the refs more power. If they throw the flag now, its spot of foul. Doesn't matter. If the refs can decide what is a spot foul vs. 15 yard penalty, that gives the refs way too much power on judgement calls. The exact reason the NFL went away from 5 and 15 yard penalties on face mask. No judgement calls. Just make it one call.

 

I really loved the two different fasemask calls, and was sad to see it go away.

 

That was a dumb move as well imo. I'm not sure how allowing refs to spot the ball on the 1 yard line for playing handsies on a throw that was never intended to actually be caught decreased their power. When "just chuck it and see what happens" is a legitimate tactic, I'm looking for an alternative, even if it means refs have make a decision about severity.

 

One possible alternative: past 15 yards you add some fraction of the distance to the spot of the foul minus 15 yards.

For example, if that fraction = 1/2 and the spot of the foul is 35 yards, then since 35-15 = 20 you'd add 1/2*20 = 10 yards on top of the 15. So a PI at 35 yards turns into a 25 yard penalty. Of course that fraction can be anything deemed fair, but at least that strikes a middle ground of sorts.

 

That seems really complicated, and difficult to quickly enforce. I think that having two seperate penalties, depending on the subjective judgement of what occurred, would be a lot quicker and straightforward.

 

I don't think it's too complicated to enforce in the same time period refs have currently. The only problem I have with your suggestion is you're going to have all kinds of questions about the subjective severity of the call = guaranteed controversy.

 

People like some controversy, it gives them something to ***** about on AM radio shows.

I like the out of the box solution, and while you could set it up so refs won't need to spend 20 minutes calculating fractions, I'm not sure it would be a viewer friendly solution. New and casual fans already dislike many of what they see as complicated rules, adding fractions to that? Hard to see it taking off.

 

Hmm.. how about "half the distance to the spot of the foul" in all PI cases and get rid of the 15 yard thing. You already have "half the distance to the goal" so conceptually this isn't any more difficult to understand and it strikes a middle ground between two options I don't like.

And while calculations might be difficult in a ref's head, it's not if they have communication to someone in a booth.

 

It's the communication that I think allows for more judgement calls as well. It's not just one ref deciding, it's a cohort of people. That's my preference at any rate.

I don't personally oppose fractions, I just think that the majority of viewers would hate it. Half the distance seems ok for big fouls, but runs the risk of allowing the defense to mug receivers in short. Third and 10? Just tackle the guy at the LOS. Could be offset of course by things like automatic first downs or minimum yardage, but now there are more variables anyway, I'd rather just have 2 penalties. Flagrant being a spot foul and either a warning or ejection, and a minor, which is a set distance, no warnings. You could even combine defensive holding and minor pass interference to further streamline.

Really, I look at other sports, and all are able to pull off "judgement" foul calls fine in most cases. Soccer and the red card system, basketball flagrant system, hockey minor vs. major penalty system. As much as we like to dog on refs, this is not some mythic task imo.

 

Soccer is not a good example though. More ref biases there than I've ever seen in the NFL.

 

Of all the examples one could think of.. that's one of the best dude!

But yeah.. soccer really needs a bunch of rule changes. You know a simple rule change that would really help? A countdown clock like in football or basketball rather than allowing the ref to add extra time as he deems fit. That is.. just stop the clock for every penalty or out of bounds etc.. Getting rid of that would get rid of all those "injuries" that cause intense writhing even when the player wasn't even touched lol.. you know.. to waste time because the ref never adds enough time! They actually tried that but deemed it too "untraditional".

Maybe more to the point about ref bias in soccer though.. there's a lot of shady stuff going on and sometimes it comes out. For example, one of the top 4 soccer leagues in the world is the Italian Serie A. They rigged the games there and stripped the championship from certain teams after it was discovered:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Italian_football_scandal

 

What about other rule changes? I heard on PTI today that leading contact with the helmet would be a penalty. No more Ryan Shazier tackling.