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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3414 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 12, 2023

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No one can walk out of this game saying the Eagles were frauds, which concerned me way more than them losing in the Super Bowl.

Going a step further, I watched this game through the eyes of a Bills fan and texted friends that the silver lining is that this Eagles team would have absolutely annihilated the Bills if they'd made it there.

It's likely that the Hurts QB Push is going to be made illegal next year, for example, because it's such a wild cheat code for the Eagles all season.

This, on the other hand, Bills fans watch and say, "why the fuck are we not doing that with our giant quarterback?".

It wouldn't be hard for the NFL to institute a penalty for, eg, "Non Competitive Play" where Pacheco would have been required to run into the endzone on that play or something like that.

You could potentially come up with a ruleset that would stop the clock when a player gave himself up. You'd have to tune it to situation to avoid it being used for advantageous clock-stopping, but that seems potentially feasible. This wouldn't be entirely novel, we already have the opposite of it at the boundary - if an offensive player goes out of bounds backwards, the clock doesn't stop, you have to be advancing the ball to get the clock stoppage.

I don't think this is likely to be considered though, the only commentary I ever see on a play like the Pacheco play is everyone in the room agreeing that it's a smart play. It doesn't feel like an unfair exploit, it's just less exciting than the alternative.

You could potentially come up with a ruleset that would stop the clock when a player gave himself up. You'd have to tune it to situation to avoid it being used for advantageous clock-stopping, but that seems potentially feasible. This wouldn't be entirely novel, we already have the opposite of it at the boundary - if an offensive player goes out of bounds backwards, the clock doesn't stop, you have to be advancing the ball to get the clock stoppage.

In all sports, I'm in favor of more aggressive and crazy rules to eliminate situations where the game becomes completely different during the last 2-5 minutes. For example, I think in Basketball during the last 4-5 minutes the rule should be that every penalty committed by the losing team drops 25 seconds off the clock. Because I hate watching the Hack-a-thons at the end of playoff games, I'd rather just watch Basketball.

I don't know how you make penalties sufficient to prevent time wasting plays at the end of an nfl game, but there's got to be a way.

The Elam Ending is just an objectively better way to end basketball games than the current rules. There's nothing worse than watching refs stare at a replay screen in between marches to the free throw line.

At one point the Arena League had a rule where the clock would stop in the last minute if the ball didn't cross the line of scrimmage, to eliminate end game kneel downs.

"For most of the league's history, any play that did not advance the ball across the line of scrimmage also stopped the clock; this prevented teams from kneeling to run out the clock. (This rule was repealed in 2018.) It also rewards defensive play, as a tackle for loss automatically stops the clock."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-minute_warning

Obviously wouldn't have affected the play last night as the runner was past the line of scrimmage (but I guess would have affected Mahomes subsequent kneel downs).

Yeah, that at least forces a QB sneak and creates a non-trivial turnover risk. I can't really think of any serious downside to that rule, there isn't an obvious exploit that could be done with it (intentionally stopping the clock that way is no different than spiking it).

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