11-20-2018, 09:25 AM
The Big 12 has come to the NFL. You can’t really hit the QB to put any hesitation into them, refs call ticky tack penalties on defenders in pass coverage, and now they can't even try jarring balls loose because they get flagged for "hitting a defenseless receiver" penalties. And on top of all that, fast tempo offense wears out defenses with only 53 man rosters.
Saints have scored 45 (Rams), 51 (Bengals), and 48 (Eagles) in last three weeks. They didn’t score against Rams in 3rd, and they came within a yard of 52 against Eagles; nearly 50 three games in a row. And we’ve reached the point a team can score 51 and lose? If you score 54 in a game you should be winning by at least 3 TDs. The game shouldn't be competitive.
I expect to see occasional offenses capable of dominating the scoreboard in college football because most teams don’t have elite athletes on defense across the board. But the NFL is suppose to be different, where scoring 40 is considered a rare accomplishment and 50 happens maybe a couple times a year across the league.
Teams are scoring 2.5 PPG more than 2017 in 2018, the greatest year to year jump since 1956-57 (+2.8 PPG), when it became illegal to grab the facemask of non-ball carriers, and 1974-75 (+2.4 PPG) when it became illegal for defenders to block any eligible receiver below the waist.
In other words, the rules have taken the physical force out of defense. If you like defense like I do, the game just isn't that interesting any more. It's one thing to take hits on QBs out of the game, but quite another to eliminate the ability for DBs to jar balls loose from receivers. Going over the middle used to come with a risk of being hit hard. Now I see these tiny WRs running across the field totally without any fear of being hit, enabling QBs to put up ridiculous passing numbers.
If the QBs can't be hit, and receivers can't be hit, put flags on the QB. The minuscule margin of error the rules are placing on defenders is making the game hard for me to watch.
Saints have scored 45 (Rams), 51 (Bengals), and 48 (Eagles) in last three weeks. They didn’t score against Rams in 3rd, and they came within a yard of 52 against Eagles; nearly 50 three games in a row. And we’ve reached the point a team can score 51 and lose? If you score 54 in a game you should be winning by at least 3 TDs. The game shouldn't be competitive.
I expect to see occasional offenses capable of dominating the scoreboard in college football because most teams don’t have elite athletes on defense across the board. But the NFL is suppose to be different, where scoring 40 is considered a rare accomplishment and 50 happens maybe a couple times a year across the league.
Teams are scoring 2.5 PPG more than 2017 in 2018, the greatest year to year jump since 1956-57 (+2.8 PPG), when it became illegal to grab the facemask of non-ball carriers, and 1974-75 (+2.4 PPG) when it became illegal for defenders to block any eligible receiver below the waist.
In other words, the rules have taken the physical force out of defense. If you like defense like I do, the game just isn't that interesting any more. It's one thing to take hits on QBs out of the game, but quite another to eliminate the ability for DBs to jar balls loose from receivers. Going over the middle used to come with a risk of being hit hard. Now I see these tiny WRs running across the field totally without any fear of being hit, enabling QBs to put up ridiculous passing numbers.
If the QBs can't be hit, and receivers can't be hit, put flags on the QB. The minuscule margin of error the rules are placing on defenders is making the game hard for me to watch.