Preview: NFL Annual Meeting

Blogcasting the National Football League, Blogcasting the NFL

The National Football League will hold its annual meeting next week (March 30-April 3) in Palm Beach, FL. I took part in a national conference call preview with Rich McKay this afternoon. Rich is the president of the Atlanta Falcons and co-chair of the NFL’s Competition Committee. Here are some of the proposals on the table and my thoughts on each:

• Most of the proposals were submitted by the aforementioned Competition Committee, but this one was brought to light by the Kansas City Chiefs. It deals with the issue of hair not being allowed to cover the player’s name plate or numerals. I don’t like it. I say if a player wants that particular style, so be it. They know the dangers involved with possibly getting their hair pulled. It’s one of the few remaining allowances of personal expression left in the NFL.
• Eliminate the force-out and rewrite that rule to say that the only time a force-out would be called is if a player was actually held and carried out of bounds. I like this proposal. It takes the official’s opinion of whether a receiver would’ve come down in-bounds out of the equation.
• Allow instant replay to include field goal reviews. The anomaly last year was with the uniqueness of the one kick in the Cleveland/Baltimore game that hit behind the goal post. The proposal is that the league expand instant replay to cover that play. I agree. Why not?
• The coin toss. Here, the winner would have the opportunity to defer. I absolutely agree. If you win the toss, it should be your decision whether you want to play on offense or defense. It’s not really “winning” if you’re forced to react a certain way.
• Eliminate the 5‑yard penalty for face mask. I agree with this one as well. Again, it’s eliminating an official’s opinion of whether a facemask was pulled or just grabbed. College football is changing their rule this year with respect to that penalty and the NFL should, too.

Those were some of the smaller, “slam dunk” proposals, in my opinion. There are numerous bylaw proposals from teams with respect to roster sizes and there’s a playoff seeding proposal. Regarding the latter, Rich said:

“The Playoff seeding proposal would provide the Division Champions automatically qualify for the Playoffs. Under bylaw proposal 4A, the two Division Champions that have the best records automatically qualify for seeds number 1 and 2. After that, seeding would be according to the best record. Tiebreakers would go to Division Champions. So in other words, you would be competing, if you were a wild card, you’d be competing for seeds three through six depending upon your record. If you tied with the Division Champion, you would lose the tiebreaker and be seeded one spot lower. That’s bylaw proposal 4A submitted by the Competition Committee.”

As this is merely a preview, I won’t cover everything on the agenda or there won’t be much to write about next week. I can say that this pre-Draft Annual Meeting is always full of interesting, and sometimes controversial, subject matter. I’ll have more, obviously, next week as decisions are made official.