Notice how much different the games are now with the new tackling rules?

[AFJF]

Me neither.

[Larz]

agreed

life goes on

[MasonJet]

Who would have guessed that this would be much ado about nothing?

Well, I did. Not to toot my own horn, but the amount of freaking out going on about this was absurd.

[tparich]

For what it's worth scoring is definitely spiking this week.

Avg Score per team

Week 1 - 18.28

Week 2 - 20.72

Week 3 - 21.69

Week 4 - 20.64

Week 5 - 22.79

Week 6 - 21.50

Week 7 - 25.38

[Child please]

Nothing has really changed, the refs are still taking drunk Bob Kraft's money.

[Vudu]

James harrison is a little bitch

How hard is it to NOT concuss someone?

[JiF]

I saw a difference.

[T0mShane]

Shannon Sharpe did a good job highlighting two plays in the Bills-Ravens game where safeties could have torched receivers and let them off the hook, on one play giving up an easy TD.

Also, a Dolphin safety went low on Hines Ward on a deep post route and could have f'ed up Ward's knee if it was a better hit. The opening kick return where the Steelers returner fumbled was also helmet-to-helmet as per the rules but wasn't called.

I'm glad the refs haven't freaked out whipping flags all over the place. It will be interesting to see when/if this emphasis rears its ugly head.

[AFJF]

Shannon Sharpe did a good job highlighting two plays in the Bills-Ravens game where safeties could have torched receivers and let them off the hook, on one play giving up an easy TD.

Also, a Dolphin safety went low on Hines Ward on a deep post route and could have f'ed up Ward's knee if it was a better hit. The opening kick return where the Steelers returner fumbled was also helmet-to-helmet as per the rules but wasn't called.

I'm glad the refs haven't freaked out whipping flags all over the place. It will be interesting to see when/if this emphasis rears its ugly head.

I think it's going to take a guy making a blatantly dirty hit. I watched chunks of a couple of different games and saw no difference in the tackling. Saw a few plays wehere a RB went head down and collided helmet to helmet with a defender and noting was called..rightfully so.

[AFJF]

Shannon Sharpe did a good job highlighting two plays in the Bills-Ravens game where safeties could have torched receivers and let them off the hook, on one play giving up an easy TD.

Also, a Dolphin safety went low on Hines Ward on a deep post route and could have f'ed up Ward's knee if it was a better hit. The opening kick return where the Steelers returner fumbled was also helmet-to-helmet as per the rules but wasn't called.

I'm glad the refs haven't freaked out whipping flags all over the place. It will be interesting to see when/if this emphasis rears its ugly head.

Also, in regard to the plays you're talking about..I'd have to see them to judge but how is it a guy has only two options...blast him, or let him go? If you can blast a guy, you can tackle a guy. I saw some replays of some textbook tackling where defenders moved their heads to the side and belted the guy in the sternum with their shoulder. Looked good to me.

[Blackout]

I saw some clear cases of players allowing catches by not going all out with their tackles

[serphnx]

There were at least 5-6 scoring plays this week where the rules pretty much gave the offense free TDs. You can watch everything if you get NFL Red Zone, although I prefer to watch regular games when they're good.

[T0mShane]

I think it's going to take a guy making a blatantly dirty hit. I watched chunks of a couple of different games and saw no difference in the tackling. Saw a few plays wehere a RB went head down and collided helmet to helmet with a defender and noting was called..rightfully so.

I definitely agree with you about the clearly dirty, blatant hit a la Merriweather. My big fear was that the refs were going to go hog-wild with the flags on anything they deemed to be too violent, and they haven't. Either it was just Goodell blowing hot air and the refs havent changed anything, or the players are making a conscious effort not to kill people. Or maybe both?

[bobbyjet69]

yes! McFadden finally had a career day because of it!

[Jetsfan80]

For what it's worth scoring is definitely spiking this week.

Avg Score per team

Week 1 - 18.28

Week 2 - 20.72

Week 3 - 21.69

Week 4 - 20.64

Week 5 - 22.79

Week 6 - 21.50

Week 7 - 25.38

Interesting. It'd be worth it to monitor this over the course of the season to see if Week 7 wasn't just an anomaly.

[Larz]

so I guess shady brady throwing 32 passes for 150 yards would be what ?

more pathetic or anemic ?

pennington-esque ?

putrid ?

[flgreen]

Interesting. It'd be worth it to monitor this over the course of the season to see if Week 7 wasn't just an anomaly.

There was 3 70+ point games yesterday. That might have something to do with the spike.

Also the points hae mostly been going up week to week.

Maybe O's are getting in sync

[Gastineau Lives]

I saw some clear cases of players allowing catches by not going all out with their tackles

Well, maybe that's the way it's supposed to be. Maybe this is how football is supposed to look.

I'll take a 10% spike in scoring for a 10,20 or 50% reduction in concussions any day. Were there any concussions this week? I haven't seen any reports of any.

If going all out for a tackle means that you go to kill someone, then what is football, really? It's so easy to say that you want to see these types of hits when you're sitting at home on a couch and your name is not Massaquoi or Heap. All the focus has been on DEFENSIVE players bitching about how hard their jobs are going to be now that they can't decapitate anyone. I don't recall hearing any offensive players being as outspoken about it on either side of the argument. I think that they haven't spoken up because they know that it would make them look unmanly if they came right out and expressed their relief at not being subject to brain damage every time they try to catch a pass. Don't they count? Or do only bitching defenders have any say in the way their game should be played?

[flgreen]

Players Adjust After Crackdown on Violent Hits

By JUDY BATTISTA

Published: October 25, 2010

Top of Form 1



Bottom of Form 1

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — In the locker room after the Pittsburgh Steelers’ victory Sunday, linebacker James Harrison said that he played the game the way he had been taught since he was 10 years old. Except when he didn’t.





Nothing is simple when there are as many moving parts and as many personal interests as there are in the N.F.L., even when the stated goal is something that would seem like something everyone would applaud: player safety.

Players protect their turf; owners and coaches try to protect their teams’ ability to play effectively; the commissioner, under scrutiny on head injuries, tries to protect the players’ health and the league’s reputation.

In the first weekend of games since the N.F.L. cracked down on banned hits to the head and neck, few people this side of New England safety Brandon Meriweather were being watched more closely than Harrison, who had drawn a $75,000 fine for a hit to the head of a Cleveland Browns receiver that Harrison still maintains was unavoidable. (Atlanta’s Dunta Robinson, who was also fined for a high hit last week, did not play Sunday because of the concussion he sustained on his hit to Philadelphia receiver DeSean Jackson, which knocked out Jackson for the week as well.)

But Harrison, labeled a repeat offender by the N.F.L., also said he knows he is likely to be suspended the next time he makes such a hit, so he pulled up on one play rather than smashing into the Dolphins’ Ronnie Brown. Similar scenes happened in at least two other games: in the Buffalo-Baltimore game and in the Tennessee-Philadelphia game.

That, of course, was the whole point of last week’s controversial edict: that elite athletes possess such exquisite body control, they can adjust to almost any restrictions without any diminishment of their ability to be effective defenders.

Through the day games played Sunday, there were no penalties for improper hits to the head and a few examples, like Harrison’s, of players altering their play to conform to the kinder, slightly gentler N.F.L. Despite predictions that big pass plays would develop, there were no obvious examples Sunday. Perhaps the impact on pass defenses will not be known until the end of the season, when reception statistics from the first six weeks can be compared with the rest of the season’s. Certainly Meriweather and Harrison will be under a microscope again next week when their teams face productive passing attacks, the Patriots against the Vikings, the Steelers against the Saints.

Harrison briefly compared the Brown play — with Brown coming across the middle with the ball, and starting to slide just as Harrison was about to hit him — with last week’s play against Cleveland receiver Mohamed Massaquoi.

“I’m a pro athlete, true, I can adjust,” Harrison said. “But I can’t adjust to something at the last minute. That’s unreal.”

Sunday’s games presented a case study in how complicated even a rules emphasis — there was no rules change last week, for all the overheated rhetoric — can be for the N.F.L. Before the games kicked off, there was quiet concern from a few coaches, players and owners that the league’s instruction to officials to throw a flag if there was any doubt about whether a hit was permissible — the idea is that the league hopes to change the offending behavior, so it is better to throw the flag than let someone get away with an uncalled foul — would put pressure on officials to be flag-happy during split-second decisions, and would inject officials’ decisions even more into the outcome of the game, where the N.F.L. would rather they not be.

“But they determine the outcome of the games all the time,” said Mike Pereira, the former chief of N.F.L. officiating who is now the rules analyst for Fox Sports.

After watching most of the Sunday games, Pereira said he saw no difference in the way the games were called. There were no close calls — no hits to the head that were of questionable legitimacy, no flags thrown that should not have been.

“This whole uproar has been over three plays,” Pereira said. “There has certainly not been a Brandon Meriweather-type hit. It’s probably going to settle down. It wasn’t an epidemic, but the message was sent: don’t let it start being that.”

Pereira said he did not think the new emphasis put additional pressure on game officials. But he does worry that the N.F.L.’s mention in its edict last week that ejection for egregious high hits is an option — officials have always had that power — creates a difficult decision for officials. Pereira proposes a solution, one that the former Jets and Chiefs coach Herman Edwards agrees with, that may open another source for debate: using instant replay to determine if a hit is worthy of an ejection.

“Ejection is a huge penalty, it’s worse than a suspension,” Pereira said. “You force the team to play one man down. You suspend somebody, you notify them by Tuesday and the team gets a chance to adjust. I think they’ll still be somewhat conservative when it comes to ejections. If they want to eject, it’s only fair to let them consider going to the replay monitor to review the play to be sure there is contact to the head or neck and to make sure they have the right guy.”

Edwards, who advocates ejection because he thinks it gives the defense an advantage if it knocks out a top receiver while the defender who improperly hit him in the head is allowed to play on, said: “Discretion is going to have to be used. You can tell when a guy is launching. And you can also tell when, like Robinson, that’s a bang-bang play. Officials get paid to officiate. When you think a guy is launching and using his helmet as a weapon, get him out of the game.”

(Page 2 of 2)

Receivers may have more immediate concerns about the crackdown. In its broadcast of the Steelers-Dolphins game, CBS focused on one hit to Steelers receiver Hines Ward by Dolphins cornerback Sean Smith. As Ward went up to try to catch a pass, Smith had a clear shot to hit Ward high. Instead, Smith bent his knees and put his shoulder into Ward’s knees to bring him down.





Ward has taken plenty of hard hits in his career, and he did not complain about the low hit. “We know what we signed up for,” he said.

But there are plenty of players who would take their chances with a concussion over a blown-out knee. Last week Giants safety Deon Grant made the point that a player who sustained a concussion because of a high hit could the next week contemplate whether he wanted to continue playing football. A player who sustained a serious knee injury because of a low hit, on the other hand, already had that decision made for him.

That player’s season could be over. But this debate surely is not.

As Favre’s World Turns

When the Vikings visit Foxborough, Mass., next Sunday, the game was supposed to revolve around the rather awkward return of receiver Randy Moss to play the Patriots, the team that sent him packing — and whose offense has strangely flourished ever since.

But that was before this week shaped up as one of the most difficult of Brett Favre’s career, making Moss a mere footnote to one of the most uncomfortable N.F.L. sagas imaginable. Favre remains under investigation for his workplace conduct toward the sideline reporter Jenn Sterger, when both were employed by the Jets. According to Fox Sports, he has already admitted to leaving messages seeking Sterger’s company — but has not admitted that he sent graphic pictures to her. Favre’s wife, Deanna, had to awkwardly answer questions about how she was dealing with the investigation while trying to promote her own book.

Favre was mocked on “Saturday Night Live.” On Sunday night, he looked barely alive and was so hobbled after a loss to the Packers that he needed to grip both railings to gingerly step down off a dais. Favre said the loss was devastating, and he looked old and defeated and perhaps not fit to play on.

Coach Brad Childress did Favre no favors when he harshly critiqued a performance that included three second-half interceptions — it’s fair to start wondering if game-killing interceptions will be a bigger part of Favre’s legacy than the spirited plays that make him so exciting — but also a near-miss touchdown pass that would have given the Vikings a late lead. Did Childress not know this is what he bargained for when he sent three players this summer to plead with Favre to return for one more season?

It’s hard to know what happens this week. Will Sterger talk to the N.F.L.? Will Favre’s ankle hold up another week? Can he will the Vikings to a desperately needed victory over the Patriots to stay within a few games of the National Football Conference North lead? For now only one thing is clear: Favre might have been better off sending his three buddies and their plane back to Minneapolis without him.

More Parity Patrol

If it was not enough that Cleveland — with a rookie quarterback and just one victory entering the weekend — beat the defending Super Bowl champions in New Orleans, or that Oakland, which scored just 9 points against the struggling 49ers, rolled up 38 points in 22 minutes against the Broncos, consider that the ultimate sign of competitive balance is how many close games are played. Six of the 13 Sunday games were decided by 3 points or fewer. Thirty percent of N.F.L. games this season have been decided by that heartburn-inducing margin, putting the N.F.L. ahead of the pace for 1997, the season that featured the most close games, when 27.9 percent of all games were decided by a field goal or less.

[Scott Dierking]

Shannon Sharpe did a good job highlighting two plays in the Bills-Ravens game where safeties could have torched receivers and let them off the hook, on one play giving up an easy TD.

So wait, are you saying that rather than attempting to tackle, players took a hands off approach?

That is not even what the attention is being paid to. No one said you can not tackle or hit hard. Just do so without head hunting or spearing, or using the helmet as a weapon.

Exactly how does that translate to "allowing receivers to score"?

[tparich]

There was 3 70+ point games yesterday. That might have something to do with the spike.

Also the points hae mostly been going up week to week.

Maybe O's are getting in sync

If my numbers are right then this would be the second highest scoring weekend in NFL history. Not in total points since there were 4 teams on a bye (and all 4 teams bye teams have been higher scoring teams this year) but on a per game average.

IMO defenses were thinking more then reacting and in time we will see it come down some.

That being said, every rule the NFL puts in always favors higher scoring games. These days when you see a score as 31-28 your not even thinking "Wow, that was a high scoring game" since it has become the norm.

It does seem like at some point offenses will get to strong and it will break the game. I wish they would at least give the defense something back. Maybe hand checking for the CBs for 10 yards rather then 5 or something.

[Scott Dierking]

If my numbers are right then this would be the second highest scoring weekend in NFL history. Not in total points since there were 4 teams on a bye (and all 4 teams bye teams have been higher scoring teams this year) but on a per game average.

IMO defenses were thinking more then reacting and in time we will see it come down some.

That being said, every rule the NFL puts in always favors higher scoring games. These days when you see a score as 31-28 your not even thinking "Wow, that was a high scoring game" since it has become the norm.

It does seem like at some point offenses will get to strong and it will break the game. I wish they would at least give the defense something back. Maybe hand checking for the CBs for 10 yards rather then 5 or something.

I would need to se that data.

I don't think this weekend ranks that high

[Scott Dierking]

If my numbers are right then this would be the second highest scoring weekend in NFL history. Not in total points since there were 4 teams on a bye (and all 4 teams bye teams have been higher scoring teams this year) but on a per game average.

IMO defenses were thinking more then reacting and in time we will see it come down some.

That being said, every rule the NFL puts in always favors higher scoring games. These days when you see a score as 31-28 your not even thinking "Wow, that was a high scoring game" since it has become the norm.

It does seem like at some point offenses will get to strong and it will break the game. I wish they would at least give the defense something back. Maybe hand checking for the CBs for 10 yards rather then 5 or something.

This weekend is not a top 5 scoring weekend, based on per game average. Not close.

[tparich]

I was going off of this article to find the highest scoring weekend

http://www.nfl.com/news/story?id=09000d5d80ccb6d9&template=with-video-with-comments&confirm=true

lists the highest scoring weekend as 837 points with 3 others at 788

All of these were done without teams on bye weeks so would break down as

837/32 26.16 per/team

788/32 24.63 per/team

Right now we are sitting at 661 / 26 for a 25.42 per team average

If they go over 73ish combined points tonight it will actually go over the 26.16

There are potentially other by weeks that could be higher. I really am not going to digging that far because I think the point is out there.

Also no team this week (so far) scored in single digits as well. I wonder how many times that has happened.

[Scott Dierking]

I was going off of this article to find the highest scoring weekend

http://www.nfl.com/news/story?id=09000d5d80ccb6d9&template=with-video-with-comments&confirm=true

lists the highest scoring weekend as 837 points with 3 others at 788

All of these were done without teams on bye weeks so would break down as

837/32 26.16 per/team

788/32 24.63 per/team

Right now we are sitting at 661 / 26 for a 25.42 per team average

If they go over 73ish combined points tonight it will actually go over the 26.16

There are potentially other by weeks that could be higher. I really am not going to digging that far because I think the point is out there.

Also no team this week (so far) scored in single digits as well. I wonder how many times that has happened.

As of right now, this weekend does not rank in the top 4-I don't have records beyond the top 4.

This weekend games are averaging 50.8 points per game:

Here are the highest 4 scoring weekends:

Week/Yr. Points Games PPG

Week 7/1983 761 14 54.36

Week 6/1987 736 14 52.57

Week 12/2008 837 16 52.31

Week 10/1980 732 14 52.29

What will we blame the week 12/2008 points on-Defense had to keep their cleats untied?

The weather was near perfect in most sites that I witnessed yesterday.

To put any correlation between watching violent hits, to points scored would be wreckless at best at this time.

[InstantClassic]

For what it's worth scoring is definitely spiking this week.

Avg Score per team

Week 1 - 18.28

Week 2 - 20.72

Week 3 - 21.69

Week 4 - 20.64

Week 5 - 22.79

Week 6 - 21.50

Week 7 - 25.38

Not just offense scores..

[sh4dy15]

As of right now, this weekend does not rank in the top 4-I don't have records beyond the top 4.

This weekend games are averaging 50.8 points per game:

Here are the highest 4 scoring weekends:

Week/Yr. Points Games PPG

Week 7/1983 761 14 54.36

Week 6/1987 736 14 52.57

Week 12/2008 837 16 52.31

Week 10/1980 732 14 52.29

What will we blame the week 12/2008 points on-Defense had to keep their cleats untied?

The weather was near perfect in most sites that I witnessed yesterday.

To put any correlation between watching violent hits, to points scored would be wreckless at best at this time.

hahaha

[Scott Dierking]

Not just offense scores..

coincidence or correlation?

[Guest Oxoboxo]

I noticed the Ravens and Saints suddenly can't play defense anymore.

[Jetsfan80]

There was 3 70+ point games yesterday. That might have something to do with the spike.

Also the points hae mostly been going up week to week.

Maybe O's are getting in sync

Valid points. The Raiders game was a real outlier that affected the data. That's why it would be interesting to follow this all season.