Here Are Four Easy Ways To Make The NFL Way Better

Football can be a great sport. It is also an extremely flawed one, especially at its highest level. While the NFL should, theoretically, be the best version of football in the world, the game is so frequently marred by issues with regards to how it’s played. So on the heels of a Super Bowl that no one enjoyed, we decided to recommend a few ways the NFL could be way better.

Four of our writers came together and threw out their best ideas on ways that they can fix the NFL. They’re all practical to one extent or another, and we’d like to throw our strongest recommendation behind the league incorporating all of these in time for the 2019 season.

ABOLISH INSTANT REPLAY — Brian Grubb

At some point in the last 12-18 months, I’m not sure exactly when or why, I started to feel bad for referees. I’ve never been particularly hard on them, so it wasn’t a huge leap, but it was still a shift I was not expecting. I think it’s because they have such a thankless job. If they have a perfect game — flawless, zero missed calls, everything explained in a simple and timely manner — no one cares. But if they make a mistake, especially if it’s at the end of a close game, good Lord. The sky falls. People yell. Local attorneys file lawsuits. It’s a lot.

And it’s getting worse. Every play is now replayed in startling clarity, frame-by-frame, from 10 different angles within seconds of the whistle. Imagine living your life like that, with every work decision you make in real time immediately analyzed in aching detail by every yokel in America with a high-definition television. It’s not right. They’re doing the best they can, you know?

That’s one of the reasons I think we should abolish instant replay. Not just coaches’ challenges, either. Nuke the whole thing, other than the cool individual plays or the explanations of why a particular set did or did not work. If it doesn’t educate me or make me say “HOLY SH*T,” don’t show it to me. Throw it right in the trash. None of it makes the game more enjoyable. It just makes people at home feel angry or smart, or both, and insufferable in either case.

[the fastest and strongest humans on the planet crash into each other in an athletic marvel of force and speed that looks like a blur to the naked eye]

REFEREE: First down!

[one pixel of one frame of a super speed high-def camera — a feat of engineering on par with space exploration — shows the nose of the ball touching the ground]

HOME VIEWER: That stupid ref!

I didn’t always feel this way. I used to say things like “If we have the technology to get the calls right, we should get them right.” But now I’ve seen it and I don’t like it. I mean, where does it end? Do we make every play open to challenge, including every pass interference call? Is that what you want? Think hard about it. Because that, to me, sounds a lot worse than a world where we just learn to live with a little human error.

It’s better for all of us, I think, this world with no replay. The referees who have to work under those conditions get some relief, which probably doesn’t matter as much to you as to me. But it’s good for the home viewers, too, who are so on edge because of it that they’re red-faced and screaming at still frames on the television on one of their precious few days off of work. That’s no way to live. It’s not healthy. Don’t do that to yourselves, people.

Let’s abolish instant replay and chill the heck out.

OVERTIME IS DUMB — Jordan Zirm

Overtime in the NFL, as it currently stands, is unbearably dumb. It reared its ugly head again a few weeks ago, when Kansas City quarterback and ketchup enthusiast Patrick Mahomes stood on the sideline, arms crossed, and watched Tom Brady surgically move the New England Patriots offense down the field against a gassed and horrid Chiefs defensive unit to win the game. Mahomes never got to step foot on the sod.

We can argue ad nauseam about how to fix the extra period. Don’t end it on the first touchdown, letting the other team have a chance to match. Just play a full extra quarter of football. Mimic what college football does. But those are all flawed options, and ignore the one true solution that would change the game of football forever, in the best way possible.

Keep the coin toss to decide who gets the ball first. It’s so archaic and nonsensical that we must keep it. But instead of trotting out your full offensive unit, the offense instead takes its quarterbacks, selects a wide receiver, and lines up at the 50 yard line. The defense then matches with its best cover corner. The wide receiver runs a go route to the end zone, and the quarterback tries to throw a touchdown. If it’s complete? A point is awarded to the offense, and then it’s the opposing team’s turn to try. The first to three points wins.

Your QB can’t throw the deep ball? Slide in your back up. Hell, slide in a position player with a stronger arm. It doesn’t matter. But could you imagine Tyreek Hill going up against any Patriots corner, with Mahomes launching a deep ball into space as they streak down the field? Can you imagine the excitement in the moment the football begins its descent? Can you imagine the horror if the wideout dusts his man off the line of scrimmage, only to drop the ball in the end zone because he was too wide open? Oh my god, the possibilities! The pressure!

NFL overtime is hereby fixed. You can thank me later (and I want my royalties, Goodell).

NUKE DIVISIONS AND EXPAND THE PLAYOFFS — Ryan Nagelhout

NFL owners constantly want to expand the regular season to squeeze more money out of their fans. But that would add significant risk of injury to players, something a sometimes ineffectual Players’ Association has actually fought against successfully. But if they want more games and money, let’s actually expand the playoffs and, in the process, fix the rest of the league.

Let’s keep conferences and get rid of divisions and find more balanced schedules in the process. That way teams like the Patriots don’t get to blow through a lousy AFC East every year and cruise their way to a first-round bye every year, and good divisions don’t have teams on the outside looking in come the postseason.

In fact, let’s give only the top team in each conference a bye and add in another Wild Card team. That might make the last few regular season games a bit more important and maybe give the first weekend of the playoffs some quality games by diluting the pool a bit. And even if that doesn’t fix what’s been a tepid Wild Card weekend in recent years, it at least makes the race to make the playoffs a bit more exciting for fans of decidedly bad teams.

You can’t actually make going to games more fun for fans, but if you actually give them exciting games to watch while you’re trapped in a concrete hell without WiFi, it’s as good as you can do. Put those extra games in the playoffs when they matter, and give good teams an incentive to keep playing for a bye week that’s harder to secure. And stop making the Bills play the Patriots twice a year.

MAKE PLAYING DEFENSE LESS HARD — Bill DiFilippo

It’s a bit weird to make this argument after the Super Bowl was one Texas high school-sized stadium filled with 3,000 people and Beth Mowins away from being an 11 a.m. Big Ten kick, I know. But in recent years, the NFL has had its pendulum swing far too far in the direction of “rules make it way easier for the offense to do things than it is for the defense to do things.”

To be clear, I’m not advocating for, like, middle linebackers to be able to decapitate slot receivers or anything like that, but the league has put forth a few too many rules that make life awfully hard on defenses. I’m all for shootouts — the Chiefs-Rams game from earlier this season was damn near my platonic ideal of the sport — but when I see stuff like this being roughing the passer, my head explodes.

In theory, the Aaron Rodgers rule makes sense! Don’t tackle someone and have your full body weight land on them. But come on, at a certain point, you have to let guys play football. It’s the same as when someone gets tripped up and takes a quarterback down from the waist-down, that should not be a penalty. Trying to blow up a dude’s ACL is bad, but getting tripped and rolling up on a QB is an accident, and accidents should not be penalties.

Some more suggestions: A host of defensive penalties being an automatic first down is garbage. You should not get an automatic first down because a cornerback held a wide receiver unless you had five or fewer yards to go. The same thing goes for, like, illegal hands to the face. Also, let’s talk pass interference: It should be a spot foul only up to 15 yards. Plus, and this is more of a college issue, defensive backs should not be punished for quarterbacks underthrowing their receivers — the Pass Interference Offense™ (watch one of the aforementioned 11 a.m. Big Ten kicks if you want to see this mastered) should be punishable by losing a game check.

The NFL realized after years of the Baltimore Ravens existing that people tend to like offense more than defense, which is true and correct and I appreciate a lot. What I don’t appreciate is when the deck gets stacked for one side of the ball that it makes life difficult for the people on the other side of the ball — the chess match that a football game should be isn’t nearly as interesting when that’s the case, and with some of the extremely not great officiating we see on a weekly basis, giving defensive players some type of safeguard against bad calls. Let dudes play defense. It would be good.