The NFL Needs To Get This British Guy To Help Fix Everything That Doesn't Make Sense About Football
Now here's a guy who gets it. For some reason, we have just accepted the things about football that don't make any sense because that's just the way things are. But maybe we needed the perspective of an outsider to help us get our act together and fix some shit in the NFL.
I want to show this lad a kickoff from 2006 when the ball was kicked from the 30-yard line and the return team would form a wedge and run full-speed into opponents with both players having a 25-yard running start. That was football, man. Now the prevailing thought is to just get rid of the play altogether, but the actual solution is to move the kickoff back five yards and let guys hit each other again. It's a violent game, if kickoffs are going to exist let's have them be an actual play.
My personal favorite point of this video is No. 2. There is nothing worse than a five-yard defensive holding on 3rd and 12 giving the offense an automatic first down. It doesn't make a lick of sense. Personal fouls, fine. But everything else should just be the actual distance of the penalty and then keep going.
I also must regrettably inform this Brit trying to enjoy the beautiful game that the balls actually already have chips in them that are used to track everything except where the ball ended on any given play. We can know exactly how far a ball went in the air on every pass and then when the receiver gets tackled, we just have a 63-year-old man eyeball it.
As for the commentators, I have to imagine this bloke listened more to Tony Romo than Greg Olsen. If your introduction to NFL commentators is three hours of, "Ehhhhhh I don't know, Jiiiiiiim," I can understand why you'd dislike them categorically.
On the whole, though, this guy has some great ideas. The NFL needs to send an invitation to this guy and get him to New York this offseason to pitch some of this to the powers that be. They don't listen to Americans, but maybe they'll take advice from someone in the country they want to play 15 games a year.