Oct 30 2008
Big Mistakes in the NFL…..
The NFL is the greatest and best run sport in the country. Don’t know enough about soccer and rugby, but I would venture to say it’s the best run sport in the World. They have trained the fans to care more about the front of the uniform than the back of the uniform. And in most major cities in the country football is the number #1 sport. But this past week the NFL and one of it’s most storied franchises made mistakes that need to be remedied midseason.
In the Pittsburgh vs. New York Giants game the Pittsburgh long snapper got injured and was unable to return to the game. Most fans can’t even name the long snapper on their team, because the only time you hear the name is when they make a mistake. But Pittsburgh leading by 2 points in the 4th quarter had to punt. So they had no designated backup long snapper so supposedly a linebacker James Harrison volunteered for the job. What happened next could only be expected. He snapped it over the punter’s head for a safety. Which then led to great field position for the Giants and the winning touchdown. I’m not blaming James Harrison for the loss. I’m blaming the Pittsburgh coaching staff. The NFL now has mini camps, OTA’s and basically no off-season for the players. All those practices and no one else on the team is able to take a few minutes each practice to work on long snapping in case of emergency. I know the guy volunteered, but how wasn’t the first choice the starting center or the backup center. How can you only have one person on your roster that you can trust to make a long snap? Imagine if they had gone down and scored a touchdown to bring themselves within one point, but then lost because they couldn’t successfully make an extra point because of the snap. This is an outrageous lack of foresight by a coaching staff that spends 70 hours a week working and 10 months a year working on nothing but football.
The NFL needs to figure out a better way to handle replays. The Atlanta Falcons were trailing the Philadelphia Eagles by 6 in the last couple of minutes of the game. The Eagles had the ball and the Falcons were using their timeouts as they should to stop the clock before the 2 minute warning. The Eagles then punted the ball and the Falcons should’ve have gotten the ball back down 6 with a little over 2minutes left. But during the punt the Falcon returner ran up to make the catch and then backed up to let the ball bounce. The Eagles jumped on the ball because it appeared that the Falcon returner might’ve touched the ball. The replays clearly showed that the Falcon didn’t touch the ball. Yet, the Falcons coach couldn’t throw the red challenge flag because he had used all of his timeouts as he should’ve to stop the clock before the punt. So everyone in the stadium and on television knew it was a bad call that in all effect had ended the game. But because of the ridiculous rules that you can’t challenge without a timeout outside of 2 minutes caused an obvious terrible call to stand. So the Falcons coach got punished because he had made the right call in using his timeouts. The NFL needs to adopt the college rule for replay immediately. Luckily this was a regular season game. Imagine if that was a playoff game or even the Super Bowl. Truthfully speaking imagine if later in the season the Eagles get into the playoffs in a tiebreaker over the Falcons because of this win. It makes no sense that every reviewable play can’t be looked at in a game. I would still give the coaches a certain number of challenges, but their should be a ref whose only job at the stadium is to buzz down to the head official on questionable calls. People will say that it will make the game longer. I ask you all to watch NFL games this week and see how many times a game plays would need to be reviewed. If it happens 5 times a game that is probably an unusual game. And it shouldn’t be about time, it should be about getting it right. And how the greatest league in the game would want to put itself in a position where a call that could be changed and isn’t because of arbitrary rules is too big of a risk.
