NFL’S competition committee needs to embrace the radical

Change to old ‘survive the ground’ rule didn’t lead to chaos as some predicted

The NFL’S competition committee traditionally regards the game’s rule book as your grandparents did Christmas.

Every year the same tree, same decorations, same background music, same feast, same good china, same tablecloth, same crystal ashtrays.

Because they all do just fine, thank you very much.

Well, too often the competition committee is just as rigid, just as old-fashioned — at least outside of the dozens of needed, safety-inspired rule changes this century. When fans, the media, even coaches clamour for some substantive change, the committee stands in the way — no matter how well-founded the motivation for the change or air-tight its logic.

Longtime committee members typically have been terrified of going too far down some seemingly simple, cool, well-meaning new road. They fear disaster and could not be more afraid of unintended consequences if they were organizing a stag party at a convent in Amsterdam.

It’s time committee members lighten up.

Reports on Monday said the committee began its first day of agenda-setting meetings here in Indianapolis, in conjunction with the NFL Scouting Combine, by spending a couple of hours knuckle-biting over what some committee members still see as a terrifying, epochal step of possibly allowing so-called judgment calls to be reviewed on replay. Heavens to Betsy!

Never mind that the NFL is now years behind the CFL in this regard.

Committee member Stephen Jones — son of Jerry and executive VP of the Dallas Cowboys — told reporters here Tuesday that there certainly was “energy” in replay-expansion discussions.

The committee can, and should, look inward for the best reason to get radical. That is, at the results of its own bold action 12 months ago.

A year ago at this time, at the behest of commissioner Roger Goodell, the committee finally set about rewriting the dreaded catch rule to exclude the long hated “survive the ground” element.

They succeeded. Owners approved the unencumbered catch rule at the annual meeting in late March and guess what? Catches this past season suddenly, immediately became non-controversial.

There wasn’t one significant incident or replay review that left any team, or anybody’s fan base, up in arms.

Just as it won’t in 2019 and beyond, the influential committee should urge owners late next month at the annual meeting in Phoenix to allow select judgment calls and non-calls (such as pass interference) to become reviewable.