8.) Move back the free-contact zone for the secondary to 8 yards
I have a few suggestions that relate to essentially allowing secondary players to play more freely, and essentially allow the NFL to reverse course from an offensive environment to a point where pretty much all QBs that play 16 games will throw for 4,000 yards and 10+ of them will have thirty TDs. It is getting outrageous. Now, we can point to the Broncos and Panthers as evidence defense still matters, but what that really shows is how differently the playoffs are refereed. The 5-yard rule is pretty loosely called, and I see the inherent problems in making referees do math to know where the 8-yard zone ends, but I do think this will help curtail passing games a bit. Right now there are just so many players who run wide open because of fear on the defensive side. That needs to change, and this is the first way of fixing the issue and swinging the pendulum league-wide closer to even.
7.) Go to the Tennis System for challenges - each coach gets two wrong challenges per game
I have no idea why the Coaches Challenge system did the half-measure of allowing teams to get a 3rd challenge if they get the first two right. Go all the way, and make it so that a successful challenge doesn't count as a wrong challenge. This cropped up in the Super Bowl, where Ron Rivera challenged the obviously wrong call to have Peyton Manning not down by contact. Since he had already wrongly challenged the Cotchery catch he was done. There is no real reason apart from the NFL not wanting games to go on, but this would at most add 3-5 minutes more. The other is the NFL doesn't want to highlight errors by referees. That is not a good enough reason. Make this easy, obvious move that will allow games to remove a small part of the influence of the referees.
6.) Go to an 18-Week, 2-Byes, schedule, and start a week later
The NFL is going to extend the schedule, but the largest driver of this is grow the value of TV contracts. I don't actually believes teams are looking at this as a way to build in-stadium revenue, especially when one of the contingency plans is to have the 17th game at a neutral site. So my suggestion will give the NFL that 18th week to sell to networks while also giving a second bye to each team which will allow the NFL to still show this as not an affront to player safety. Also, I just love the 16 games the NFL plays. 16 is a square number, it is on the list of powers of 2. It is a great amount of games. Finally, the world of the the US wants the day after the Super Bowl to be a Holiday. Easy way to do that would be to end the season two weeks later, which on most years would correlate with President's Day (this year would be an exception). If they start a week late, give College Football another week in the spotlight, and add a week to the season, we get to finish on President's Day Weekend.
5.) Use GPS for 1st downs instead of the Chain Gang
There is a lot of talk around using GPS technology at the goal line, much the way soccer has begun to do so. That is an obvious and easy fix. I want them to take it a step further. Allow it to be used throughout the game, specifically to measure first downs. The chain gang is one of the most ridiculous aspects of football. First there are so many ways things can go wrong; my biggest gripe is that if both ends are not prefectly aligned longitudinally, the length becomes something other than 10 yards. Also, it takes forever. Using GPS technology allows us to quickly measure if a team has gotten a first down, and also quickly lets coaches know how far away they are. The investment can't be too much either and would shave a lot of minutes off of a game.
4.) Stop making Illegal Contract an automatic first down, unless the foul occurs beyond the line to gain
This is one of my biggest gripes, when an illegal contact penalty gives a team a 1st down on 3rd and 17 when the QB is under pressure. Any time a team gets a cheap first down it is aggressively annoying. I understand why these penalties are given automatic first down status, but if it was a play where even the lack of the penalty would result in a 10-yard completion still short of the line to gain, I don't see why the team should be rewarded with a first down on a bad throw. Give them the five yards, let them re-do the play and get another try, but make the team actually achieve the line to gain, either by the ball in actual play, or by getting held or impeded past it.
3.) Stop counting kneels and spikes as actual plays
This is just a personal gripe. It doesn't hurt the actual game at all, but it is ridiculous for people who like to look at stats and see them as an actual description of the game. Why does the QB get an official incompletion for a spike? Why does the QB get a rushing attempt and negative yard for a kneel. The Kneel-Down actually bugs me more, because so many times I'll hear that team X ran for Y yards on Z carries, when Y is artificially low and Z artificially high. So many times the kneels, especially when it is an extended kneel with the intent on running more clock, change that math from a good rushing day to a bad one. The spikes don't hurt as much, but they are pointless incompletions. I don't think any actual contractual terms or bonuses are due based on completion percentage, but even if not I can't imagine QBs actually like either of these things.
2.) Start calling offensive holding to the same level the NFL calls defensive holding/IC/PI
My final change aimed at evening the playing field between offense and defense is having referees actually call offensive holding, at least at the level commensurate with defensive contact and holding. So many times rushers are so obviously held and choked and tackled without any call. This is really glaring in the playoffs, but there are noticeable examples of plays being wrongly extended. The referees get some calls right, but there seems to be no real governance on the lack of offensive holding being called. This will result in more 10-yard penalties, but I think it fair for a lost sack or incompletion. Penalties are already unfairly weighted to offense - think about all the penalties that result in automatic first downs compared to the scant few that are loss of downs on offense. This is the biggest way to tip the scales back.
1.) Move the AFC and NFC Championship Games to different days
This would actually be a big change, and I'm not sure how to really do it other than hold one of them on Monday Night, but I do think there is an opportunity to have the AFC Championship and NFC Championship get their own days.
**Quick sidebar: I once interviewed for an internshp with the NFL. One of the questions they asked was one way you would improve the NFL as a business. This was my idea**
There are so many advantages. First, the networks would love it. More eyeballs, more opportunity to turn the Title Games into big events. They can have halftime games, longer pre and post-game shows. They can turn these into big days. The networks get exclusive time each year to pull out the stops, and both CBS and FOX would get this each year. For the teams, it probably makes more sense to have one on Sunday and one on Monday, giving two teams more time to prepare, and with the two weeks off there is no large disadvantage for the winning team on the Monday game. The NBA has done a great job of segmenting the Conference Finals, and the NCAA has done it with turning Final Four games and the Football Playoffs into events. The NFC and AFC games get tied together too much both being on the same day. There is so much to gain by spacing them apart.
