NCAA changes rules to restrict James Doug Foug's super power
April 17th, 2018 at 11:42 AM ^
and no summary of the artcile, for shame!
key rule change is fair catch anywhere inside the 25 and get the ball at the 25
but agree - this is a bummer for teams with good kick coverage and a kicker who can drop it inside the 5 yrd line
April 17th, 2018 at 11:48 AM ^
That title is anything but vague to regular readers of this here blog!
April 17th, 2018 at 11:45 AM ^
The fuck?
I assume this is to encourage people to avoid injury by not returning kicks?
Edit: Yep, sure is.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:50 AM ^
have two choices at this point. They can perform invasive surgery on the kickoff procedure and leave them in as basically symbolic or just remove the kickoff from the game. Statistics show that kickoff returns and kickoff coverage are disproportionately dangerous to their impact on the game.
I think I would like them to make the changes they are making instead of eliminating the kickoff because I think removing the kickoff entirely would take away an important symbolic moment after a score even if 90% are going to be touchbacks or fair catches.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:11 PM ^
I'd rather they just get rid of the kick off, give the team the ball at the 25, and skip the extra commercial break.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:23 PM ^
They'll find a way to get that commercial break in. Rules come and rules go, but commercial breaks are sacrosanct.
to get rid of.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:25 PM ^
and go
oooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAHHH!
when the kicker kicks the ball at the beginning of the game, half, and after a score. Do you really want me as a fan who attends maybe one game a year to lose this experience? /s
NCAA galaxy brain move will be to replace kickoff with a commercial. Touchdown -> commercial break -> special kickoff replacement commerical brought to you by Arby's -> commercial break.
Getting rid of kickoffs means getting rid of onside kicks. But the result is that if you go down by more than one score with less than five minutes left the game is virtually over. If you take a couple of minutes to score, the other team gets the ball 100% of the time to run the clock out.
As I mentioned in another comment, you could give the team the option of doing an onside kick similar to PAT or 2pt conversion. You could also give them a 4th and 10 at the 40 situation like has been suggested before.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:13 PM ^
The biggest problem with eliminating the kickoff is you then get rid of the onside kick.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:19 PM ^
You still need to MAKE the fair catch. There are still a lot of muffed catches.
Kinda like how an intentional walk in baseball still needs to throw 4 pitches. You never know what might go wrong.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:43 PM ^
I believe the intentional walk rule in MLB changed last year. No need to throw the 4 pitches any longer. One of those rules I don't like to help speed up the game by 24 seconds.
I get that a lot of the MLB's time saving rules are annoying, but I don't see how anyone has a problem with the intentional walk rule. Making a professional throw the ball 4 times with almost a zero percent chance that literally anything happens is dumb and a waste of time.
There's an old proposal by Greg Schiano in the wake of Eric LeGrand's spine injury at Rutgers. It really covers all the bases. First, you have to understand and agree that the kickoff is the most dangerous play in football and punts are a billion times less likely to cause injury.
Instead of a kickoff, the team who just scored or who would regularly be booting it away gets the ball at their own 30 and it's automatically 4th & 15.
Instead of a kickoff, just punt it away. The danger of the kickoff is guys running into each other with a 50-yard running start. Punts take that away.
In place of an onside kick, you just go for it. It's been awhile, but I believe the success rate is similar.
And that's pretty much it. You still have the traditional kick to change possession and start things off, and you still have a low-probability opportunity to retain the ball in an emergency. Fake punts replace the surprise onside.
Everybody wins.
This is pretty compelling. You still get the excitement of possible returns (moreso than with the new 25 fair catch rule), possible fakes, and even straight-up going for it. Punts are way more exciting than KO anyway IMO.
You could be forgiven since you've probably watched Brady Hoke punt teams (and Harbaugh to a lesser extent), but college rules make the vast majority of punts boring as long as teams utilize those rules.
The other side of that coin thuough is Michigan's ability to get after field goals and punts in the last few years (4 against UCF alone).
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rule should be adopted. They should at least give it a run in the NFL preseason to get a feel for how it would look. That sounds like a really good idea.
No changes. Look, I'm all for all of the rule changes recently to enhance safety. In fact, I'd try to ban head to head contact altogether if that was possible. But kickoffs and returns are a fundamental element of the game, and even more so, a kickoff return for a TD is just about the most exciting thing that can happen in football. Making changes that fundamentally alter a core component of the game, not to mention making it less exciting to watch, should be avoided.
Every single person playing football now knows the potential problem with head injuries. They choose to play. They choose to be risky with their health. That is good enough for me, and for them in fact. Let the NCAA allow waivers for players (if any) that don't want to be on kickoff teams. Fine. Otherwise let this go. In fact increase (back to the old rules in college and NFL) the chances of long kickoff returns.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:44 AM ^
My thoughts exactly.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:47 AM ^
Both the NCAA & the NFL are doing everything humanly possible to stop actual returns from occurring short of the one thing that would actually stop them and that is to just do away with them altogether.
Just do it for God's sake.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:50 AM ^
Because they are exciting. They don't want to completely eliminate that excitement.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:51 AM ^
If you get rid of the kickoff entirely, you eliminate the possibility of an onside kick and, consequently, a lot of fun, late-game drama. While I don't personally like this rule, it does preserve the possibility of an onside kick while making every other kickoff essentially a touchback.
All that being said, I think we're going to see a new specialty arise, which will be the line-drive squib, which could create some fun chaos from time to time.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:05 PM ^
April 17th, 2018 at 12:34 PM ^
April 17th, 2018 at 12:13 PM ^
I think we'll also see more hangtime-oriented kickoffs that go high and short.
TL;DR is try to make Hank Poggi-types fair catch around the 20 so your coverage team can recover if he muffs it. If the primary returner gets up to that level he has to fair catch in traffic.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:22 PM ^
I think this is the most likely. You only give up ~5 yards in that situation. Although I think return teams will adjust to that and use more returner type players there to keep Poggi types from trying to make that catch.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:51 PM ^
If I'm a special teams coach the back 4-5 guys are all dudes who at least returned kicks in HS with this new rule.
There would still be some scary plays as you'll get gunners diving for the muffed kicks at full speed in traffic. Not many teams have a Foug so at least that approach won't be super widespread.
April 17th, 2018 at 11:58 AM ^
Right above your comment is a great reason why. check it out.
Basically, so you don't lose "RO-OW-WWLLL TIDE" and such on kickoffs.
Worth it!
April 17th, 2018 at 12:03 PM ^
Fuck Alabama.
Wow - talk about things that ought to be an NCAA rule!
April 17th, 2018 at 12:13 PM ^
I'm down. Eliminates onside kicks alongside with it, but who cares. Want to have a chance to win? Don't be down by 2 scores with the time running down.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:13 PM ^
Or, allow a team to elect to do an onside kick similar to electing to go for 2.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:19 PM ^
Then you can elect to kick an onsides everytime but boot it deep anyways. Onsides kick is the high water mark for a sore loser making up a rule to give himself a chance. You just know some dingus kicked the ball 3 yards and fell on it during a game, and the other guy was like, WTF is that? And he goes "Onside kick, duh" and the other coach goes, well you have to kick it at least 10 yards bro.
It's dumb. You score, the other team gets the ball.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:33 PM ^
You couldn't be more wrong if you tried. The onside kick is a holdover from rugby. It's the deep kickoff that is the innovation.
April 17th, 2018 at 12:44 PM ^
Obviously it's a holdover from rugby. I was being facecious. Also, if rugby was a good enough game we wouldn't have invented American football.
I don't get why we so dearly need to hang onto a part of the game that happened 1 time in a Michigan game the entire 2017 season...
April 17th, 2018 at 12:59 PM ^
On the flip side, if it's that rare of an event, why do you think it needs to be eliminated?
Abolish the onside kick and a lot of 4th-quarter comebacks become impossible. I don't like that.
If your argument for getting rid of kickoffs is "well what about onside kicks" then I think you are off base. Kickoffs are the most dangerous play in football, and onside kicks are more dangerous than regular ones. An onside kick is not important to the game (nobody has ever said, "we lost because we couldn't recover an onside kick"), but player safety is one of the top priorities.
The point is, Michigan and it's opponents participated in 138 kickoffs last year and only one was an onside kick. Why on Earth would that one occurance be the reason the risk player injury 137 other times?