The Sports Curmudgeon®

Let me reset the premise for all of these “NFL Improvement” rants. The NFL is a well run league and it certainly has captured the attention of the US sports fans to a degree unmatched by any other attraction. Nonetheless, it can be made better and I keep trying to come up with suggestions to that end.

The last time I did one of these, I got a note from Dwight Perry at the Seattle Times. Here was his comment:

“How about promoting a receiver rating similar to passer rating to evaluate receivers? It seems as though there’s too much emphasis placed on number of receptions and not enough to yards or TD catches. That would be the same thing as giving the rushing title to the back with the most carries.”

Messr. Perry is absolutely right. The guy who “leads the league in pass receiving” at the end of the year is the guy who caught the most passes. And that is not always the best receiver in the league. So, there needs to be a way to incorporate the number of catches by a receiver into some kind of metric that takes into account factors such as these:

TDs scored
TDs scored that created a lead change.
Game winning TDs
First downs made
First downs made in situations of third-and-ten or longer
Yards gained (gross)
Yards gained on the pass (Gross yards gained minus YAC)

I will leave it to the same folks who gave us the QB Rating system to figure out the math and the weighting system here. Moreover, it must be understood that no one should ever use this proposed “receiver rating system” to compare receivers across decades of football. There were great receivers in the 1940s and 1950s but their “numbers” will be minuscule because of the different way the game was played back then.

Just before the Super Bowl was played, I read something that made me wonder if Commissioner Roger Goodell had hacked into my computer. He recognized a problem that was on my “clipboard” that I intended to include the next time I put together an “improvements rant”. And he just went and talked about it. Here it is:

The NFL needs to find ways to incentivize teams that have already made the playoffs to continue to play hard and serious football in those final “meaningless games”.

The reason they are meaningless is that the playoff format is set in stone such that teams can lock in their position in the playoffs a couple of weeks before regular season games are done. Somehow, the seeding of the teams needs to incorporate the team record after the team has guaranteed that they will be in the playoffs in some position and the other competitive factors such as overall record and head-to-head records for two teams that have played each other and both will make the playoffs. Late season games where teams are “resting their starters” bear a terrible resemblance to that final exhibition game in late August/early September…

Since I am talking about the playoff structure in the NFL, I really do think that it is time for the league to expand the playoffs such that those first week byes are eliminated. The battle cry here is to make the byes go bye-bye. Now the problem here is that in a weaker conference there could be teams with 7-9 records making the playoffs and that is not a good thing. Therefore, here is my suggestion. No team can make the playoffs with less than 8 wins in the season. If that means that an AFC team has to be added to the NFC playoff bracket because there are not enough NFC teams with eight wins, then so be it…

The other way to eliminate the byes is to cut the playoffs down to four teams per conference and then to grant division winners access to the playoffs only if they win 9 games in the regular season. If a division winner does not qualify with 9 wins, the best wild card team would make the playoffs that year. I recognize that this means there will be four fewer playoff games for the NFL and that will reduce revenues and so this will never ever happen. But the quality of the football played would be increased…

I would definitely eliminate the “dark week” between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl. The hype for the Super Bowl can easily be fit into a single week; the teams spend the vast majority of their season playing every weekend; there really is no need for or purpose served by continuing to schedule the “dark week”.

There is an asymmetry in the game that need not continue there. If a defender commits pass interference 25 yards downfield, the ball is marked at the spot of the foul. If the offensive pass receiver pushes off – they do that you know on at least half of the pass routes they run – the penalty is only 10 yards. My suggestion is to make defensive pass interference a ten-yard penalty with an automatic first down and offensive pass interference a ten-yard penalty with the loss of a down. That makes the two transgressions much more similar in their cost to the offending team.

If you have followed these rants for any period of time, you know that I am opposed to All-Star Games in all pro sports. And the Pro Bowl is one of the prime offenders on that front; the game is a meaningless waste of time as far as I am concerned. However, I recognize that my top-shelf idea - - to cancel the game permanently - - is not going to happen so here are two ideas to make it less unappetizing as a football product:

1. Do not announce the Pro Bowl teams in December before the final two or three games have been played. There is no need to do that; it just is not all that hard for the players to find seats on airplanes to get to Hawaii for the game; they do not need eight weeks notice to get a flight and a hotel room. By waiting until after the last game of the season, there is a better chance that the Pro Bowl selections will recognize the players who had the best season overall and not the ones who had a real good start and then tapered off as the season ended. This year, the team was announced with two regular season games left to play.

2. Once the players have been selected - - and some have collected the bonuses in that are in their contracts for earning this honor - - the league needs to require them to attend and to play except for really significant impairments. Obviously, a player who needs surgery and has it done in January will not be ready for an early February game; he can be dismissed on a case-by-case review. Obviously, Sean Taylor was not going to play in this year’s game even though the fans selected him; the league will have to exercise some wisdom and judgment here. How can they enforce this? Well, new player contracts can revise the standard Pro Bowl bonus clauses to tie the payment to game participation. In addition, the league can get the players to commit to playing in the game if they are selected with some kind of consent form that the players sign. If they do not sign, then they are not on the ballot for selection in the first place.

As with all of my other great ideas for improving the NFL product, these too are very likely to die on the vine. I have no intention to go all theological on you today, but I am truly a voice crying in the wilderness here. These ideas are not going to happen any time soon. You’d have to be really naïve to think the NFL is going to convene its movers and shakers to take up these concepts and suggestions in the next couple of months - - naïve enough to leave the light on in case Jimmy Hoffa comes home tonight.

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…