NFL: How NFL Rules Are Debunking the Defense Wins Championships Cliche
Published by Rich Byington on October 12, 2011
Article Source: Bleacher Report - Chicago Bears
The old cliche, ‘defense wins championships’ may soon be extinct in today’s NFL vernacular. NFL offenses are rewriting the record books in 2011 with an aerial assault rivaling that of the Allied Forces’ shock and awe barrage on Iraq in the early 1990’s. Many teams are throwing the ball at a rate of nearly 70/30 in pass/run ratio.
AP Sports writer Cliff Brunt reports, “quarterbacks have passed for 4,500-yards in a year 22 times in NFL history. Fourteen of those great seasons have come since the start of the 2004 season.”
As many as seven quarterbacks are either well on their way to surpassing Marino’s single yardage mark or nipping at its heels. What gives?
Defenses are handcuffed by rule changes that started in 1978 and have been gradually augmented and emphasized since that time. Before the changes, teams sending receivers over the middle of a defense was like hand feeding a starving lion a juicy T-bone. Raider assassin Jack Tatum left plenty of bones scattered on a football field in those days.
Nowadays, not only will a defender get a penalty for an overly vicious hit, his pocketbook gets banged as well. I think we all recognize the importance of protecting players as much as possible, but this is football, a violent, aggressive sport among men that comes with an inherent risk of injury.
Referees have become so ingrained about protecting the sanctity of player safety that it seems more and more they are making unnecessary calls that emasculate a defense. In Monday night’s game between the Lions and Bears, replays showed a perfectly executed shoulder hit by Brian Urlacher on a receiver crossing the middle. Fifteen yards.
In the Patriots–Jets tilt, cornerback Kyle Arrington had a B-line on Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez. Instead of lowering the boom, it looked as though he intentionally tried to avoid any kind of questionable hit that would draw a penalty and/or fine. Are defensive players pulling in the reins?
They would tell you ‘no,’ but one has to wonder how much the rules and emphasis on quarterback and receiver safety are negating some of their aggressiveness.
The NFL has become such a theatre of entertainment that we’re actually seeing antics of flopping in order to draw penalties. Call me crazy, but I think the average fan would rather see a gladiator atmosphere when they watch a football game than an artistic rendition of theatric drama. So concerned with losing its big box office stars (quarterbacks) is the league that it’s gone off the deep end to protect them and by doing so robbed defenses of the ability to compete without inhibitions.
Yes, we want scoring because it’s much more entertaining than a 6-3 slug-fest, but we also love to see players get ‘jacked up’ from good ole’ fashioned hard-nosed technically sound hits. Go ahead and keep throwing flags on the helmet to helmet hits or shots below the knees, and even dish out the fines, but let’s not get so carried away in emphasizing player safety to the point that we start saying, ‘offense wins championships.’
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