Adapting to CHANGE: STRATEGIES and IMPLICATIONS of New NFL RULES

Intro the NFL has just held its annual meeting and with it we have a whole slew of new NFL rules and so I thought in today's video we would go through some of the most impactful rules what my thoughts on them are and what they should do to the game of football overall but before we get into the video I want to take a quick second to ask you to please subscribe to the channel ring the bell for notifications it really helps us out if you're a fan of the NFL you'll love this channel as we release multiple NFL related videos every Tuesday and Friday all year long now let's get back to the video so the NFL actually changed a whole slew of rules many of which you probably haven't heard of like some of them are related to just League bylaws like moving the trade deadline back a week some of them are related to reviews of plays like teams can now review if a passer is out of bounds or down before throwing the football which they couldn't do before and a bunch of other review rules but in today's video we're only going to talk about the rules that actually change the game as it's played on the field so the first rule is an incredibly Niche Rule and one that I haven't even made any graphics for basically it says if an offensive team commits a major foul then turns the ball over then the defensive team now the returning team commits a foul then the offensive team's foul will be enforced before the defensive team fouls I.E it's not just an offsetting foul this is extremely minor extremely Niche we don't need to talk about it a lot it's just trying to prevent offsetting fouls from occurring in these situations the second Challenges rule is how challenges are implemented so this is how his historically challenges have always been implemented basically you only got two challenges unless you got both your first two challenges right in which case you granted a third challenge that's now different now teams get three challenges so long as they don't get both their first two challenges wrong I actually really like this rule because at the end of the day you don't need to use challenges as much as you used to think about it you have all scoring plays that are automatically reviewed all plays in the last two minutes of each half that are automatically reviewed and so there's not that often where you need to challenge a play and so now that you get basically three challenges unless you get both wrong it gives you basically as many challenges as you likely will need as long as the refs don't up a lot and it still disincentivizes teams from doing frivolous challenges because they know if they get a challenge wrong then they're basically going to not get the third challenge if they don't get either of their first two challenges right so it still creates that disincentive along with potentially wasting a timeout as another disincentive but it allows teams to have more access to challenges if reing goes poorly which we all know it has in recent years and so yeah overall I like this rule I think it's a minor change but I think it's a good change it creates all the disincentive you wanted but it gives more challenges and more ability to get plays right and that's Hybrid Kickoff what we all want okay so the first rule change and the first of the two really significant r rule changes is on screen now it's the hybrid kickoff and I took this graphic from the Pat McAfee show because they just crushed it they knocked it out of the park this graphic is great please utilize it because it's the best one out there so you can read all the rules at the top here and see how the setup is but I'll quickly try to describe what happens so basically you have the kicker lines up as they've always lined up that's unchanged the returners line up as they've lined up previously that's not really a change the big change is that the rest of the kicking team lines up at the opposing team's 40 yd line and the return team minus the two returners line up between their own 30 and 35 yd line so they're lined up really close to each other to start and none of those players are allowed to move until the ball is either a received by the returners or B hits the ground and so you basically have a situation where only the returners and the kicker can move until the ball hits ground or is returned and then it's a much more closely tied scrum the goal of this is to prevent those massive hits that the NFL claims causes significant amounts of concussions and so how does this look in practice with the other peripheral rule changes well so a Touchback is now placed at the 30 yard line so long as it lands in or out the back of the end zone however if it rolls into the end zone it's placed at the 20 yd Line This is done to basically disincentivize the return team from just letting the ball bounce into the end zone because they would get it at the 30 yd line if this rule wasn't in place or the 40 if it went out the side of the field now they are heavily incentivized to return it if the kicking team places it in this Landing Zone I.E between the 20 and the zero speaking of the landing Zone if the kick does not hit at least the 20 I.E land in the landing zone or out the back of the end zone then the ball is placed at the 40 yd line I.E the same as if it goes out of bounds again this is made to disincentivize Kickers from just kicking it super short where their team can get to it pretty quickly the final thing to note is that you cannot do an onside kick out of this formation if you want to do an onside kick you need to tell refs ahead of time that you want to do an onside kick and it'll be lined up how onside kicks traditionally have been lined up this is one thing I really really really don't like because it's similar to what happened with the extra point you can't do surprise onside kicks anymore much like you can't do surprise extra points anymore yes technically could still do a surprise extra point but you need to get 15 yards on it instead of just two yards like it used to be so at the end of the day what are my thoughts on this kickoff I don't love it but I also don't hate it I don't love it compared to what the kickoff used to be but I also understand the NFL was hellbent on basically removing the kickoff from the game they had basically created a world where the kickoff just didn't exist and was nothing but a formality for the ball to be placed at the 25 yd line for the new incoming offensive team this isn't an opportunity to actually have a kickoff play again and so while it's not as good as the old kickoff play I acknowledge it is better than nothing and so I'm willing to give it a shot I think the one risk is that the kicking team still could decide they just want to kick it through the back of the end zone and let the offensive team get the ball at the 30 yard line and if this happens we're just going to be left with the same situation we used to have and this basically changes nothing except for saving a few guys' legs and not having to run down the field but in order to see if that's going to be the solution we're going to have to see what happens and I think it's going to take at least half of the season for teams to realize what the optimal way to play is for the kicking team I'm convinced the optimal way to play for the return team is to return it if they have the opportunity to but for the kicking team I'm not so Hip Drop Tackle convinced and the final rule is the hip drop tackle this is a tackle that has been talked about a lot in the off season and it is officially been banned much to the dismay of basically every defensive player who has ever played in the NFL so what is a hip drop tackle well this is basically the three steps to a hip drop tackle step one is you wrap a player this is fine this is not illegal basically every tackle involves a wrap at some point in time the second step is the drop basically where you dewe yourself from the ground while having a player wrapped and use your weight to basically pull a player down to the ground again this is actually not illegal this is something a lot of people thought might be made illegal but the NFL did not make this technique illegal it's step three the take down that's where the illegal part happens it is only illegal if you commit steps one and two while also landing on a player's legs while going to the ground if you land on a player's legs it is illegal if you land on the ground it is not illegal so let's look at an example let's look Mark Andrews Example at the Mark Andrews tackle this is the tackle that basically made the league take notice of hip drop tackles and if this tackle doesn't happen I don't think this rule change happens at the end of the day so with this tackle what you can see here Wilson clearly has Mark Andrews wrapped and has clearly deweed himself but the important thing let's zoom in he's landing on his leg this is what theoretically caused the injury this is what makes it so that Mark Andrews missed the rest of the regular season and ruin my chances of a fantasy Championship yeah you Wilson you Cincinnati so this tackle moving forward would be illegal because Wilson lands on Andrew's legs while also performing The Hip drop maneuver but let's look at a hip drop tackle that actually wouldn't be a legal so here's a Titans Example tackle by the Titans on a Dolphins player and I actually found this from an article that was advocating for the Banning of the hip drop tackle but it's actually not an illegal hip drop tackle at least in the current rules that have just been made so you look the Titans defensive player let's zoom in he doesn't land on the legs of the Dolphins player he has landed off to the side and so he's using his body as basically a fulcrum to take the Dolphins player to the ground but he's not landing on his legs and as such this is not an illegal tackle okay so we talked about what the My Thoughts hip drop tackle is but what do I think of the hip drop tackle I don't like this rule I played defense in football my entire life and I utilize the hip drop tackle a lot now I acknowledge I didn't land on players legs that often but that's because I played primarily outside linebacker in defensive end where I was tackling in much more enclosed spaces where the hip drop tackle and landing on the legs is used fairly frequently is when a player is in open field again think about Mark Andrews Mark Andrews going straight for the End Zone the defensive player is coming at him from the side and so being able to drive through that tackle is extremely difficult what you do is you wrap from the side and you basically try to drop your body but in order to drop your body you have to drop across that's how you get the weight if you just drop your body like this it's dead weight and so you drop your body across the player and where you inevitably land is on the legs of the offensive player assuming the offensive player doesn't bother to get their legs out of the way yes I understand it's a dangerous play for offensive players and it does cause significant amounts of injuries but at the end of the day football is a dangerous game and as you keep making rules to protect offensive players you're actually making the game more dangerous for defensive players cuz they're going to have to use alternative tackling methods that might not be as safe the hip drop tackle became very common place when defensive players basically removed their use of the helmet when they stopped being able to tackle with the helmet I.E using the whole of their body to get the tackle in place the hip drop tackle became common place and now we're Banning the hip drop tackle the tackle that replaced a ban tackle for player safety reasons and so you're basically making it nearly impossible for Defenders to do their job adequately and in a world where you're playing tackle football in a world where hitting each other and getting injured is just a way of life I don't like the Banning of this tackle I do appreciate that the NFL did make it so only landing on the legs was illegal the technique if you don't land on your legs is still legal and I do appreciate that I thank the NFL for that they didn't go all the way they took a part measure and they made it still possible to perform this tackle but you still have the same problem you still have the problem of making it so hard for Defenders to do their job and making it really hard for refs to call this play because how easy is it for a ref to see if a guy landed on the guy's leg it's no longer just do they perform the technique it's Did they perform the technique and land on the player's leg and who knows if the player's foot just got caught in the turf cuz guess what Turf still legal they didn't get rid of turf even though it's a player safety issue because you know why get rid of that either way I acknowledge this comes off as a bit of a rant a little bit unpolished and that's because it is I wanted to be able to rant about the hip drop tackle because at the end of the day it's something that I feel strongly about I don't like this rule in fact the NFL PA is very against this rule it was the owners that implemented it and I'm pretty sure it's because the owner's goal is to have higher scoring games and the harder they make life for the defense the higher scoring games they have but what I hope they realize and what I don't think they do realize is that highly penalized games even if it results in highs scoring games aren't fun to watch I saw plenty of games this past year that had high score lines that I did not enjoy because of all the penalties and so I hope that this penalty isn't called very frequently that it doesn't materially impact the game but if it does and it creates more scoring but by way of more penalties I don't think it's going to help the NFL in the way that the owners think it will either way guys that's it for the video let me know in the comments if you like the new rule change if you don't like them and what other rule changes you wish had have been implemented in this off seon but with that I'll see you all next time peace