NFL’s helmet rule may be defenses’ breaking point
The NFL’s new “helmet” rule has created angst and confusion throughout the league heading into the first Sunday of the regular season.
But once games kick off and the 99th NFL campaign gets rolling in earnest, there’s something else I expect the new “helmet” rule to create: more offense.
And few teams are better equipped to take advantage than the 49ers and Raiders.
The “helmet” rule, which was approved unanimously by NFL owners this past offseason, states that to lower one’s head while initiating contact will result in a 15-yard penalty.
The new rule has, of course, put defenses around the NFL in a tizzy.
“It’s an idiotic rule,” said 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman. “There’s no way you can tackle the way they are asking people to tackle and play football.”
But while defenses try to figure out how to properly tackle in 2018, I expect offenses to prosper. Yes, the new rule applies to offensive players as well, but it’s — pardon the pun — targeted at defenders. And the safety position, in particular, is challenged by the new rule.
Now, they’re not called safeties because they play a position that’s safe. Far from it. Safeties are the last resort — the safety valve — and that has turned them into defensive enforcers. When your job is to clean up the mess the rest of the defense has allowed, sometimes you have to turn to brute force.
49ers general manager John Lynch was no stranger to force when he played in the NFL — he was one of the hardest-hitting safeties in the history of the league. And while he accepts the new rule, he’s fully aware of what it’s going to do to his old position.
“I’m not going to lie to you — I struggle with it,” Lynch told KGMZ-FM 95.7, adding that the NFL was a “different game” back when he played. “I’d like to think that I could have adjusted my style, but I think I played at the right time.”
The flag-a-palooza of the preseason didn’t create any more clarification for players. A conscience leads to trepidation, hesitation, and ultimately, big gains for the offense. Particularly if it’s a safety wondering what is and isn’t a legal hit. What happens when the last line of defense doesn’t know how he can or cannot defend?
Safeties need to diagnose with expediency and attack in a straight line. If a cornerback is beaten, a safety cannot have a false step in providing aid — lest he hands the offense a massive advantage.
That advantage the offense could have this season, I suspect, will be most obvious over the middle of the field — where safeties are called upon most often — and that’s great news for the 49ers and Raiders.
Both Kyle Shanahan and Jon Gruden are branches from the Bill Walsh tree and disciples of the West Coast Offense — an attack predicated on short, quick passing and best exemplified by shortto-intermediate slant routes over the middle.
Compounding matters for defenses, the NFL has made illegal contact (a defender maintaining contact with a receiver after 5 yards) a point of emphasis for referees this season. Tight ends and slot receivers should feast — quarterbacks and offensive coordinators should be salivating.
That, of course, is probably part of the plan. The NFL has tried to manufacture offense for years — slowly and surely disadvantaging defenses to allow for freer movement of the ball, particularly in the passing game. They know that people don’t tune in for defensive struggles. They want high-flying action. And, as such, five of the seven best offensive seasons in NFL history have come in the last seven years.
With ratings down, would it come as any surprise that the league is trying to inflate offensive numbers again?
The helmet rule is being passed off as a player safety change — and that might, in fact, be the noble reason the rule was implemented. But it, paired with the illegal contract emphasis and the already finicky standard for pass interference, and you reach a breaking point. This is all too much for a defense to reasonably handle.
How will defenses adjust? Beats me, but in the meantime, I expect a points bonanza.