Quote:
Originally Posted by fljet
I am not famillar with the new rule changes in the NFL rulebook all I know is that they did away with the Garden variety facemask.
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Which only existed for (what is to me) a short time anyway. This is one of those back-and-forth rule changes football goes thru. The differential penalty for the face mask violation was introduced by NCAA and eventually copied by other bodies because it was thought that the personal foul resulted in tiny differences in judgement between no call at all and a 15 yarder, resulting in inconsistent enforcement. It was thought that by introducing an intermediate possibility that it would take away this "ledge" or "cliff" between no protection at all and a severe penalty in mild cases. After years of experience, I guess they figured that it made calls even more inconsistent to have this intermediate judgement, leading to 5 yards (and a first down in the NFL) in cases where the player so contacted wasn't really endangered thereby. Maybe some decades from now they'll go thru this cycle again with this rule -- unless headgear will have changed in a way that makes the whole thing moot.
Robert