With the NFL's owners meetings on the docket next week, it's officially rule-proposal season. In addition to the always fun catch-rule, which is expected to be the one of the most hotly discussed issues, changes might be coming to the way the league punishes players for egregious "non-football acts."
On Tuesday, NFL executive vice president Troy Vincent told USA Today Sports that the NFL competition committee will propose a rule that gives the league's officiating department in New York the power to eject players from games, which means the league office could use instant replay to determine if a player should be tossed from a game instead of waiting until after the game to punish the player. To be ratified, 24 of the 32 owners, who will meet in Orlando next week, will need to vote in favor of it.
"We are looking to address what's obvious to coaches, players and fans," Vincent told USA Today Sports.
If it is passed, it'll give the NFL's officiating office even more control a year after it was given authority on instant-replay reviews. The NFL's head of officiating, Alberto Riveron, faced significant criticism in his first year at the helm, though those criticisms were almost entirely related to the catch rule. Despite Riveron's shaky first season, he'll be retained for the 2018 season -- potentially with even more power this time around.
That might scare some folks in a 1984 type of way, but there's a pretty strong argument to be made in favor of the proposal. How many times have we seen officials miss an egregious non-football act, which allows the violator to continue playing only to get punished by the league after the game?
It happened a couple times last year, like when Buccaneers receiver Mike Evans blindsided Saints rookie cornerback Marshon Lattimore after the play. Evans was eventually suspended for one game, but he was not ejected. Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski also got suspended for his cheap shot on Bills defensive back Tre'Davious White, but like Evans, he avoided an ejection. Presumably, if the rule proposal had been enacted last season, both Evans and Gronk would've been ejected after a replay review. Vincent also pointed out that the rule could help officials sort through messy brawls, you know, so we can finally punish the player who is stupid enough to punch another player in the helmet.
One can also argue that if players know they can be ejected after an instant replay, they'll be less likely to break the rules. As far as I'm concerned, the only argument against a proposal like this is that we've seen the NFL's officiating office botch more than their fair share of judgement calls in the past, which means they'll probably find a way to wrongly eject a superstar during a big game, which means giving them even more power might not be the best idea.