Double-forward pass and 25-second clock: XFL says it’s aiming for innovation, not gimmickry
If the XFL follows in the unsuccessful footsteps of previous spring professional football operations — including the original XFL — it won’t be because the new league failed to provide an innovative product.
New rules unveiled this week reflect a desire on the XFL’s part to up the action while shortening games. When the league debuts in February, football fans can expect to see double-forward passes, three-point conversions and National Hockey League-style overtime shootouts.
Other rules are aimed at increasing player safety, particularly on kickoffs, and at encouraging coaches to take chances. They won’t have as much time to make decisions as their National Football League counterparts, who have 40 seconds between plays, because the XFL will have a 25-second play clock. The league will also have a running game clock and 10minute halftimes.
One thing the XFL won’t have are extra-point kicks from any distance. Instead, offences will stay on the field after touchdowns and have the option for a one-point play from the twoyard line, a two-point play from the five or a three-point play from the 10.
“From research we had done, fans think there’s too much downtime and dead time. I suppose games have gotten longer,” said XFL commissioner Oliver Luck, a former NFL quarterback. “We wanted to take a step forward by going back to games under three hours, based on all our fan research. More action and more plays speed it up.”
As with the original version, the XFL is backed by WWE chair Vince McMahon. Whereas the first XFL, which staged just one season in 2001, attempted to have a pro-wrestling sensibility, McMahon and Luck hope the new league will succeed by giving football fans what they have said they want.
What the XFL hopes to avoid, according to Luck, is giving the impression that it is relying on gimmicks to lure viewers. “I think there’s a really fine line between innovating and being gimmicky, and we’re trying to stay on the proper side of that,” Luck, the father of recently retired quarterback Andrew Luck, told The Washington Post last year.
Explanations of the new rules at the league’s website include a portion that lays out the reasoning behind them. For the double-forward pass, in which a team may make a second forward pass on a given play provided the first one did not cross the line of scrimmage, the listed rationale states that the new rule improves on the NFL’s version of the play by making it “less risky because the first pass may fall incomplete rather than becoming a fumbled lateral.”