Month: March 2024

The NFL often give lip service to the issue of player safety.

The ignore player safety when they play a full slate of Thursday night games and increase the schedule from 16 to 17 games.

But the NFL did pass two new rules to help make the game safer at the recent league meetings but they probably batted .500 on the issue.

The new kickoff rule inspired by the XFL kickoff rule is a good idea but the banning of the hip drop tackle probably will just create more controversy. It adds another layer of subjective calls by the officials for a play that doesn’t happen that often and caused only 15 players to be injured last year. There will be more controversies about when it is called and when it isn’t.

The new kickoff rule, though, looks like a plus. It will likely cause more returns but without an increase in injuries. It’s also a plus that the NFL is adopting an idea from another league. It is designed to have more returns and turn them kind of into a running play with the violent collisions.

For a standard kickoff, the ball will be placed on the 35 with 10 kickoff coverage players lined up on the opposing 40, five one each side.

The return team would have at least nine blockers lined up in the so called setup zone between the 30 and 35 yard line. Seven of those players have to be touching the 35. Two returners would be allowed inside the 20.

Any kick that reaches the end zone in the air can be returned or the receiving team could take a touchback and get the ball on the 35. A kick that went out of bounds in the end zone or out of the end zone would result in a touchback and possession at the 35.

Any kick received in the field of play would have to be returned. A kick that hits a receiver or the ground before the end zone and goes into the end zone would return in a touchback with possession at the 20.

The players can’t move until the ball hits the ground or is touched by the receiving team.

For free kicks following a safety, the ball will be kicked from the 20 and the kicker can use a tee.

In the fourth quarter the trailing team could declare an onside kick under last year’s rules.  There will no longer be surprise onside kicks in the first three quarters.

 The rule was passed on a trial basis which means it would have to get 24 votes to return in 2025. But the success of the play in the XFL is a sign it may work in the NFL. If nothing else, it’s worth a try by the league.

When Lamar Hunt founded founded the Amercan Football League in 1960, the story goes he lost a million dollars his first year as the owner of the Dallas team that moved to Kansas City in 1963.

His father, H.L. Hunt, one of the richest men in the country at the time, supposedly said that if he kept losing a million a year, he would go broke in 150 years.

Of course, it turned out to be a great investment. The Chiefs are still owned by the Hunt family and are worth an estimated $4.3 billion. Not that the Hunts plan to sell.

But the Chiefs are threatening to move if voters on April 2 don’t approve an extension of a 3/8 cent sales tax that is set to expire in 2031. A yes vote would extend the tax for 40 years and it would give the Chiefs $500 million to help renovate Arrowhead Stadium. The Hunts would chip in $300 million. The Royals would get $700 million towards the building of a new stadium.

Since voters are often reluctant to approve money for stadiums for billionaire owners, the Chiefs decided to play the moving card.

When Chiefs president Mark Donovan was asked what the options would include, he said, “I think they would have to include leaving Kansas City, but our goal here is that we want to stay here.”

Are the Chiefs bluffing? Would they really consider moving and if so, where would they move to?

Now it is up to the voters to decide if they want to find out if the Chiefs are bluffing.

When the Chiefs traded up with the Bills from the 27^th spot on the first round to the 10^th spot in the 2017 draft, it turned out to be one of the best trades in NFL history. 

Kansas City used the pick to take Patrick Mahomes, who has already  has already won three Super Bowls for the Chiefs, so giving up two firsts and a third round pick was an incredible deal.

For the Bills, though, the trade was a disaster.

 When they recently made cornerback Tre’Davious White a designated a June 1 cut, the Bills were left virtually emptyhanded in the deal. The used the 27^th pick in 2017 they got in the deal to take White.

With the 2018 first-round pick, they drafted Tremaine Edwards,who left as a free agent a year ago. And they packaged the 2017 third-round pick to get Zay Jones, who was later traded.  They only player they have left is Tommy Doyle, who was obtained in the Jones trade but he has played in only 12 games.

 Fortunately for the Bills, they got quarterback Josh Allen in 2018.

But they learned that trading down isn’t always a good idea. Even if they didn’t have Mahome rated that highly, they could have taken cornerback Marshon Lattimore, who went to the Saints with the next pick and has gone to four Pro Bowls.

Meanwhile, the Bills have been a contender with Allen at quarterback but have yet to make a Super Bowl with him. And they have twice lost to Mahomes and the Chiefs in the playoffs, including last January.

For the Chiefs, it is the trade that keeps on giving. For the Bills, they are left thinking of what might have been.

The New England Patriots two decades run was certainly good fodder for a TV documentary, which is why Apple TV is running a 10-part documentary on the Patriot dynasty.

What makes it different than most sports documentary is the chronicle of all the off the field stuff. Like Spygate, Deflategate, Bill Belichick’s gruff personality and his decision to bench Malcolm Butler in the Super Bowl loss to the Eagles and Tom Brady’s departure.

But the drama started even before the Belichick was hired in 2000. It started during Bill Parcells’ four year tenure as head coach of the Patriots when Parcells left after a rift developed between the coach and owner Bob Kraft. 

Parcells is still unhappy that Kraft wouldn’t let him run the draft although the series leaves out some of the details.

“Kraft had no real background in football and in his inexperience took the draft away from me,” Parcells said. “I felt some people in the organization that were incompetent were making decisions for the organization.”

Kraft’s take was, “With coach Parcells I didn’t feel he always put the team first.”

Not surprising they were heading for a divorce. “I knew I wasn’t going back to the Patriots,” Parcells said.

Parcells then repeated a line he used at the time, “If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.”

Parcells left after taking the team to the Super Bowl following the 1996 season and losing to the Patriots. It was no secret he was leaving and it almost overshadowed the game. Parcells didn’t even fly back on the team plane. 

As Drew Bledsoe said, “That was a frustrating thing for us to go to the Super Bowl after being the worst team in the league. It was a pretty big accomplishment and that was not the story during the week of the Super Bowl. The story was whether or not Parcells was going to go to the Jets.”

And there was more drama. 

Parcells signed a five year deal when he hired but after the third year, he asked Kraft to chop the final year off the deal because he wanted to leave after his fifth season. Kraft agreed but added a provision that Parcells couldn’t coach anywhere else that fifth year.

Parcells then tried to claim he was free because his contract expired after four years, ignoring the fact that Kraft had added that provision barring him from coaching elsewhere for a year. There was a lot of back and forth in the news media as Parcells insisted he was free to leave to coach somewhere else but Kraft was going to hold him to the contract.

When the Jets tried to hire him, the league back Kraft and the Jets had to give draft picks in compensation. Belichick left the Patriots to be the defensive coordinator for Parcells, who coached the Jets for three years and went 30-20 and kicked himself upstairs and named Belichick the coach. Belichick was supposedly the coach in waiting. But he immediately resigned, citing the fact the Jets ownership was in flux although maybe he wanted to get away from being under Parcells shadow.

Kraft decided to hire Belichick back although this time he had to give the Jets picks. Belichick started out 5-13, but then Bledsoe was hurt and Brady took over and the dynasty began. But the drama never seemed to end despite all the Super Bowl wins. Another team may win six – the Chiefs are halfway there—but no team is likely to duplicate all the Patriots drama.