10 Ways to Fix the NFL

[filial_piety]

Might as well add the "1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi" rule for pass rushing

.......

 

[FaTaL]

Too many bad teams

I'm not sure how you fix that

 

[South Paw]

fire Goodell

 

[Verbal Kint]

1. Scheduling is awful. eliminate the whole "if u finish in 3rd place, u play the 3rd place team of such and such division" etc. it creates random ass games between Tampa Bay & Chiefs etc. Should focus on building rivalries. create a Rivalry Week. i.e. 49ers/Raiders should play every year.. Pats/Seahawks, Eagles/Steelers.. Redskins/Ravens....etc.

Manufacture rivalries then hold them over? Doesn't work as newer rivalries only matter when both teams are good which changes year to year. But the league already kind of does that which is why Manning and Brady played almost every year

2. Make It, Take It. if you score u get the ball back until the defense stops you.

3. Yards Carrying Over: If it's 2nd and 7. and u get 11 yards on the play, that extra 4 yards should carry over. so it would be 1st and 6.

That basically turns the field into 10 sections and complicates things. What if you end up with 3rd and 16 from the 24 yd line but get a defensive holding call which is only 5 yds but an auto first down? Is it now 1st and 1 from the 29 with the yard to get being the 30 or is it first and 11 since the previous yard to gain was the 40? And the entire purpose of downs is negated if the yards to gain is constantly changing

5. Offensive holding should be a 5 yard penalty. 10 yard penalties are drive killers.. nobody wants to see a 3rd and 26 every other play.

eh. If it was only 5 you'd see a ton more holding. If its 3rd and 4 you're going to see plenty of OL just tackling folks instead of allowing pressure

 

[tremonthustler1]

i agree with 5,6, and 10 OP

Outside of that, i'd be a 1000% happy if they put the games that are not on the local networks on separate cable channels (i.e. NFL1,2,3 etc) so that we have more choices as to what games we wanna watch.

I skip games all the time just because I don't care or like the teams that are playing.

SHyt sometimes in NYC for example, we're stuck with the got dam Jets playing at 1pm without anything else to watch...so instead of watching a 1-9 team put up 3 points a game...I watch something else or go out of the house for a few hours.

And NO, I'm not paying that 3-400 for that redzone or whatever it is.

You just answered why they'd never cater to your broke ass.

 

[filial_piety]

You just answered why they'd never cater to your broke ass.

...hey I pay my cable bill

 

[tremonthustler1]

How about these for solutions:
1) Full time refs. There is far too much bad officiating in the league. This should take care of a lot of it.

2) Make defensive pass interference a 15 yard penalty, and lessen its enforcement (as well as illegal contact and defensive holding). It is a joke that a team can move 60 yards in one pass play that didn't even result in a completion. Plus all three of these penalties are called far too often for ticky tack contact giving offenses a ridiculous advantage.

3) Adopt college "targeting" rules and enforcement. Throw a guy out and call a 15 yard penalty for targeting the head or neck, but make it reviewable so the refs don't just throw a flag on every hit that looks violent. Too many guys are getting flagged for clean hits just because they look bad, but aren't really bad.

4) Institute incentives for players staying with their current team in free agency - like the NBA, allow the current team to offer a better financial package to free agents. The league should want good, exciting, young teams to be able to largely stay intact.

5) Agreed with your assertion of making offensive holding a 5 yard penalty. Holding happens a lot and is called very inconsistently - it really doesn't make sense to essentially kill a drive over this nonsense.

6) Bring back the 5 yard facemask penalty. It is absolutely ridiculous that a guy trying to make a clean tackle, in the heat of a moment, barely grazes a facemask and it has to be 15 yards. Stupid

7) At the next CBA, the owners need to agree to give up more of the revenue pie to the players, and provide lifetime health benefits for retired players. Players are increasingly deciding that the health risks are not worth playing the game and they are not being taken care of when they are retired. Players need to be compensated better for the risks they are taking while playing (especially when they look around and see the obscene contracts NBA players are getting compared to theirs), and taken care of medically even long after they are finished. This will help the players focus more on the game, on being great players, and TEAM oriented players, and putting a great product on the field, rather than just focusing on getting their money while they can, which they are forced to do now.

8) I'm on the fence about this one, but at least open to discuss. What if the NFL introduced max contracts similar to the NBA? Far too often teams are essentially penalized for having great drafts because they can't possibly pay all the talent they've accumulated on their rosters. Each team's salary cap is typically dominated by the top handful of guys on the roster because they need to get paid. And if a good/great player can't get the contract he's earned with his current team because they can't afford him, there will be someone who can and will pay him thinking he's that missing piece they need when he never is. Just absorbed into a mediocre franchise never to make an impact again.

9) Enough with all the discipline and corporate sanitizing. If players want to wear specialized cleats, do some crazy end zone stuff, whatever - why are you stopping them? Oh, it tarnishes "the shield"? Roger being obsessed with discipline and the league's brand image is what gets them in trouble so often to begin with. Was the world angry at Goodell for domestic violence 2 years ago because too many players were committing DV? Or was it REALLY because he positioned himself as the "discipline" commissioner but proved himself to be woefully inconsistent and clueless when it came to actual important things like DV? Obviously the latter. The league has buried itself in a hole of its own image of "discipline", opening itself to criticism when it gets the actual important things terribly wrong. How about they start by letting players wear accessories to express themselves, or stop penalizing them for showing a little personality? Ease up on these players - they put their lives on the line for you, let them be themselves.

10) Lay off the WEEEEEEEED. No I'm not talking about the players - I'm talking about the league. STOP TESTING FOR IT. They will earn goodwill with the American public who is largely in favor of legalization and overall destigmatization of the drug. They will put entertaining players like Josh Gordon, Le'Veon Bell, and Martavis Bryant back on the field, rather than taking them off of it for extended periods of time for something so pointless. I think they will find very few holdouts to the archaic mindset of weed being some evil substance so there would probably be very little public criticism. So many players are doing this when they aren't being tested anyway, so who the hell cares at this point?

11) Allow kickers more time to practice kicking. I don't even know what the current rules are on this, but most of these dudes straight up suck.

All of these changes are aimed at making the product on the field better. It's far too sanitized, too corporate and buttoned up. If you took the uniform colors away, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to tell which teams were playing because they all generally look, feel, and play the same. You might have one or two exciting games a week and the rest are terrible and uninteresting. fukk that.

1. You can hire full time refs if you want. They'll never escape criticism because instant replay fukks it up for them.

2. Not a chance they'd ever change defensive penalties like that. Players would just goon and make it count because the penalty is worth it.

3. Players would just flop a lot if it meant getting your best defensive guy out, especially QB's.

4. League is not doing a soft cap.

5. Again, the penalty wouldn't hurt as much. A penalty is a penalty for a reason.

6. Agreed, kinda.

7. who's paying?

8. Again, you want an NBA soft cap.

9. Agreed. Goodell is overcompensating for Tagliabue never really doing shyt when players went crazy.


10. good luck

 

[charknicks]

So I have my own ideas about this and have identified these major issues with the league, and how I'd fix it. Here's what I see are the problems:
1) Officiating. It's bad, it's inconsistent, many of the rules are terrible, enforcement of the rules is terrible, many things need complete overhauls.

2) Players are not incentivized to have passion for the game because of short careers, health risks, and greedy owners not willing to give up more of the league revenue to pay players and take care of their medical issues after retirement. As a result, players need to look out for their paychecks first and foremost rather than just focusing on winning.

3) Too much parity. Yes competitive balance, in theory, is a good thing, but this version of the NFL is trash. The only ways to get ahead in the league is to have great players contributing on their rookie contracts so they aren't getting that big second contract money yet, or to just hope to god you have a great QB and head coach. The rest of the league besides the top few are full of mediocre, inconsistent teams, very few of whom have any entertainment value. Yes there should still be competitive balance, but when 25 out of the 32 teams are boring as fukk to watch, you have a problem. When having an elite QB (of which there are only a few) gives a team such a distinct advantage, and everyone generally plays the same style, the league becomes a cesspool of mediocrity outside of its handful of best teams.

4) The product is too corporate and sanitized. Between the rules, the uniform policies, and the discipline, the entire league just feels like 32 groups of walking, talking robots executing programmed commands like Westworld or some shyt.

How about these for solutions:
1) Full time refs. There is far too much bad officiating in the league. This should take care of a lot of it.

2) Make defensive pass interference a 15 yard penalty, and lessen its enforcement (as well as illegal contact and defensive holding). It is a joke that a team can move 60 yards in one pass play that didn't even result in a completion. Plus all three of these penalties are called far too often for ticky tack contact giving offenses a ridiculous advantage.

3) Adopt college "targeting" rules and enforcement. Throw a guy out and call a 15 yard penalty for targeting the head or neck, but make it reviewable so the refs don't just throw a flag on every hit that looks violent. Too many guys are getting flagged for clean hits just because they look bad, but aren't really bad.

4) Institute incentives for players staying with their current team in free agency - like the NBA, allow the current team to offer a better financial package to free agents. The league should want good, exciting, young teams to be able to largely stay intact.

5) Agreed with your assertion of making offensive holding a 5 yard penalty. Holding happens a lot and is called very inconsistently - it really doesn't make sense to essentially kill a drive over this nonsense.

6) Bring back the 5 yard facemask penalty. It is absolutely ridiculous that a guy trying to make a clean tackle, in the heat of a moment, barely grazes a facemask and it has to be 15 yards. Stupid

7) At the next CBA, the owners need to agree to give up more of the revenue pie to the players, and provide lifetime health benefits for retired players. Players are increasingly deciding that the health risks are not worth playing the game and they are not being taken care of when they are retired. Players need to be compensated better for the risks they are taking while playing (especially when they look around and see the obscene contracts NBA players are getting compared to theirs), and taken care of medically even long after they are finished. This will help the players focus more on the game, on being great players, and TEAM oriented players, and putting a great product on the field, rather than just focusing on getting their money while they can, which they are forced to do now.

8) I'm on the fence about this one, but at least open to discuss. What if the NFL introduced max contracts similar to the NBA? Far too often teams are essentially penalized for having great drafts because they can't possibly pay all the talent they've accumulated on their rosters. Each team's salary cap is typically dominated by the top handful of guys on the roster because they need to get paid. And if a good/great player can't get the contract he's earned with his current team because they can't afford him, there will be someone who can and will pay him thinking he's that missing piece they need when he never is. Just absorbed into a mediocre franchise never to make an impact again.

9) Enough with all the discipline and corporate sanitizing. If players want to wear specialized cleats, do some crazy end zone stuff, whatever - why are you stopping them? Oh, it tarnishes "the shield"? Roger being obsessed with discipline and the league's brand image is what gets them in trouble so often to begin with. Was the world angry at Goodell for domestic violence 2 years ago because too many players were committing DV? Or was it REALLY because he positioned himself as the "discipline" commissioner but proved himself to be woefully inconsistent and clueless when it came to actual important things like DV? Obviously the latter. The league has buried itself in a hole of its own image of "discipline", opening itself to criticism when it gets the actual important things terribly wrong. How about they start by letting players wear accessories to express themselves, or stop penalizing them for showing a little personality? Ease up on these players - they put their lives on the line for you, let them be themselves.

10) Lay off the WEEEEEEEED. No I'm not talking about the players - I'm talking about the league. STOP TESTING FOR IT. They will earn goodwill with the American public who is largely in favor of legalization and overall destigmatization of the drug. They will put entertaining players like Josh Gordon, Le'Veon Bell, and Martavis Bryant back on the field, rather than taking them off of it for extended periods of time for something so pointless. I think they will find very few holdouts to the archaic mindset of weed being some evil substance so there would probably be very little public criticism. So many players are doing this when they aren't being tested anyway, so who the hell cares at this point?

11) Allow kickers more time to practice kicking. I don't even know what the current rules are on this, but most of these dudes straight up suck.

All of these changes are aimed at making the product on the field better. It's far too sanitized, too corporate and buttoned up. If you took the uniform colors away, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to tell which teams were playing because they all generally look, feel, and play the same. You might have one or two exciting games a week and the rest are terrible and uninteresting. fukk that.

I agree with most of this, however:

1. Officiating- how would you make them 'full time'? What can you do different from February-July that will make the officiating better? Nothing that they can see in some training will prepare them for how fast the game is during live action. If anything, I would have younger refs who can keep up with the action. Other then that, they are just calling games as instructed by the league.

2. Agree 100% with the 15 yard defensive PI penalty. The game is already leaning so much to the offense that its sickening. (The worst one is #6. Offensive players can drive a defensive player into ground via facemask, but a light touch on the offensive player is called. Smh.) Anyway, dont need 50-60 yards penalities for deparation heaves downfield.

3. I dont agree with the 'players need to look after paychecks first and foremost' thing 100%. Players DO look after them because they get paid much more then players from the 70s, 80s, etc, so they worry about the money first and competition later (not anything wrong with that, football is a violent game). Where is the cutoff for 'retired players' though? Lifetime health benefits gotta start somewhere. 3 years in the league? 4 years in the league?

4. No one is stopping kickers from kicking somewhere. They can go kick everyday. No excuse for being so bad at kicking

5. Cant rock with you on the salary cap thing. Thats one of the better thing and what gives 20 or so teams hope at the start of the season. People are complaining now, it would be much worse when your New Yorks, Bostons, Chicagos, LAs of the world have the best players and small market teams are left behind. You cant be bailed out, you gotta manage your cap/ players. All players will want more money, gotta manage it right.

6. They need to chill on the sanitizing and the weed, true.

 

[resurrection]

I agree with a lot of what you said, or would at least be open to it.

The one's I disagree with are ones many will side with you on, but I think are poor ideas.

1. Absolutely do NOT adopt the college targeting rule, especially if it's enforced and reviewed the same way as it is in college.

I'm curious - what don't you like about it? I think it's a great way to try to get head shots out of the league and avoid just automatically throwing a flag for everything that "looks bad"

2. PI should absolutely remain a spot foul. Now, I can possibly get on board with it being review-able, but to be able to mug someone 50 yards downfield and have it only be 15 yards would be criminal. At least if you can review it, you can take back the incorrect call. It should definitely not just be a 15 yard penalty.

I hate this rule man. I know the scenario you described isn't ideal either, but I think it's MUCH better than just handing a team a 60 yard play because of some handfighting and physical play downfield. I think the league should want more physicality rather than this p*ssy ass bullshyt. And 15 yards is still a major penalty.

3. Teams being able to offer better for their own draftees is a good idea on the surface, but I do wonder what would happen with parity if that were to happen. That is one thing the NFL does not want to lose.

fukk the NFL's current version of parity. Instead of making every team competitive, it's made every team suck. It's terrible to watch. Some of my "solutions" are aimed at rewarding teams for assembling good rosters, rather than penalizing them. Parity be damned if all it does is make the league unwatchable with a bunch of 8-8'esque teams

 

[resurrection]

1. You can hire full time refs if you want. They'll never escape criticism because instant replay fukks it up for them.

Of course they'll still be criticized, but it's not about making them perfect, it's about making them not be terrible. Officiating in the league seems to just be getting worse and worse over the years. I think part of it is how they are instructed to call games, basically just throwing flags on everything and worrying about if they're right later. I think if it is their actual job instead of their weekend gig, there will be time to understand nuance so they don't have to just throw flags on every play.

2. Not a chance they'd ever change defensive penalties like that. Players would just goon and make it count because the penalty is worth it.

But they have changed defensive penalties like that, just in the opposite direction, just in the past few years. They wanted to increase offensive numbers to appeal to casual fans and fantasy players. I don't think DBs were running around just gooning before that, they were still getting penalized for gooning. Besides, if we're just going to isolate the extremes, then just my opinion, but I'd rather see DB's be able to goon it up than receivers be able to do whatever they want whenever they want. It's been one of my biggest issues with the league the past several years - defensive secondaries have had their teeth removed. Let them play a little more. Not a free for all, but ease up on them. Their job is hard, don't put them at even further disadvantages by watching their every move like a hawk.

3. Players would just flop a lot if it meant getting your best defensive guy out, especially QB's.

That's why it's reviewable.

4. League is not doing a soft cap.

Dude this is a message board. I don't work for the league. Telling me what you think they will or won't do is pretty irrelevant considering these are my opinions on how to make it better. I like the idea of a soft cap in the NFL. Sue me

5. Again, the penalty wouldn't hurt as much. A penalty is a penalty for a reason.

Yes, that's the point. I agreed with the dude who said holding cripples a drive too much. I would like for it to not hurt as much, that's the entire point. Yes a penalty is a penalty for a reason, and it will still be a penalty. But penalties also have different degrees (5 yards, 10 yards, 15 yards, spot foul, etc.) based on their severity. And I think holding is far too subjective, happens far too often, is called far too inconsistently from crew to crew (and game to game) to justify making it 10 yards. It's really unlikely to recover a drive from a holding penalty and I think that's too harsh a penalty.

7. who's paying?

They already get pensions. Whatever structure is set up to pay for those, do something similar. What's so funny about that? Dudes are retiring because they're scared of the health risks. Future NFL players will choose other sports or other careers entirely because of this. Maybe if they know they'll be taken care of afterwards, the risks will be much more worth taking.

8. Again, you want an NBA soft cap.

You're right, I do. So what?

10. good luck

Again, whether you think it is likely or not, I don't really care. I just think a change like that would make the league better.

If you want to debate if changing penalties, legalizing weed, or having a soft cap would make the league better or not, cool, tell me why. But going on about how they won't happen kinda defeats the purpose of this thread. None of us work for the league, we're just saying how we think we could make the league better.

 

[L&HH]

Only #1 is doable.

Steelers/Eagles
Slurs/Ravens
Raiders/49ers
Cowboys/Texans
Giants/Jets
Rams/Chargers

That should be done every year instead of every 4 years and marketed as Rivalry Week like college football and basketball do

The rivalry game is the only one I sort of like. The only problem is you might give a team an advantage or disadvantage to the rest of their division or conference. For example the 49ers don't look like they'll be competent at all for another decade (kind of like what they were before Harbaugh smh) so you'll give the Raiders a freebie every year until they become competent.

 

[resurrection]

Damn @tremonthustler1 all your "the league will never do that" "good luck with that" type responses.. That's exactly the league's problem. They're so fukking stubborn, so monolithic, so slow to change, so sanitized and corporate, of course it's just unthinkable for a lot of us that maybe they will institute some things that would change the way they do things. Most successful companies like to innovate and are never satisfied with "this is how we do things." The NFL, by contrast, likes to cling to whatever they think has always worked and completely bombard us with it. Oh you like scoring? Here's all the scoring!!! Oh you like watching games, we'll put 'em on every fukkin night!! How about, instead of the only changes being to just enhance whatever they think is already working, actually make some overhauls to the way things are fundamentally done? The writing is on the wall with ratings being down and lots of fans griping about the product on the field. Sure they're a giant and nowhere near dying or anything like that, but if they don't listen and keep trying to force more scoring, more games on more nights, more of everything they already do, they're just going to continue trending in that direction.

 

[010101]

better athletes at qb
& coaches who will be creative in moving the ball
instead of letting some cement footed qb play toss for 3 downs until they get lucky

more gamebreakers more highlights

*

 

[dabestkeptsecret]

One thing they can do is get better tv announcers. 90% of the time i imagine trump supporter calling the game
- get rid of the extra point field goal. If someone scores a td. It should be worth 7 points. If the team goes for 2 but dont convert. They lose a point.

- they need to get rid of this robot culture and let the personalities shine. ( no flags for celebrations, no fines for talking about the refs or the league)

- Thursday night football
- football in london

Agree with previous posters about change in penalties

 

[resurrection]

better athletes at qb
& coaches who will be creative in moving the ball
instead of letting some cement footed qb play toss for 3 downs until they get lucky

more gamebreakers more highlights

*

I think there have been many attempts to get better athletes and creative play calling into the league, but I think the biggest obstacle to making that work is not really in the league's control. I think the biggest obstacle to that is the speed and athleticism of defensive players. Coaches who try to be different always start hot then get figured out quickly and converge to the mean.

In college, if the QB is really fast, he very well may be the best athlete on the field and make college defenses look ridiculous. In the NFL, the closing speed and hitting power of the guys chasing him just simply do not allow talents like Lamar Jackson and RG3 to play the same way in the league as they do in college. Now, if they can be freakishly athletic AND throw darts from the pocket, then we have another story. So I think the solution there starts earlier than the NFL. Athletic high school QBs who want to be college QBs, and athletic college QBs who want to be NFL QBs, need to learn the arts of reading coverages, throwing from the pocket, and protecting their bodies earlier than they do. And most HS or college coaches will not necessarily facilitate that because it's their job to win at their own level, not prepare a guy for the next level. So a lot of it has to be pure work put in by the players to try to develop their own "pro style" skill sets along with the gifted athleticism