2019 Rules Changes
 

Hooray. The only thing I would've added is to start the game clock on runs OOB outside of 2 minutes in each half.

I still have questions. Is this a case where the NF took on a college rule without the actual guidance of all the little things that come up with this rule. Like what is going to happen if we cannot put the ball in play at a certain time? What signals do we give if we are resetting the shot clock? Are there going to be ball boy strategies for this newer policy?

Even at the small college level, we have problems with this being done right. I see this even more so at the high school level as well.

Peace

My guess is the R will have the latitude to stop the play clock and start a 25. All just a guess right now, though.

I would hope so, but if I do that on my own, am I going to have people claim that is not my job or responsibility? Will I have other officials claiming I should not do things that way? All I would like is a standard. But with the NF's track record, we might be in the middle of the season before this is clarified. And we might start doing one thing and have to change in the middle because no one considered the possibilities of the potential problems.

Peace

I like the new change. There will be some issues with the clock initially. Hopefully they get them ironed out before too long. One that I really liked was the change of illegal formation, where you need at least 5 on the line with no more than 4 back. I believe this will make it easier.

You could never have more than 4 in the backfield.

It just eliminated those times when the offense had only 10 players on the field with 6 on the line and 4 in the backfield. That was previously an illegal formation

Thanks.

You'd think the article might've summarized the "thorough discussion" that led up to the 40 sec. Seems to me that if 25 secs. (or any specified amount of time) from the RFP is good for the situations it's going to be used in, it should be good for all situations. I'd like to know what the argument is for the variation, which seems just one more chance to goof.

I'm guessing the effect on the game, other than making its administr'n a tiny bit harder, will be a slight one allowing the team on offense to take a little more tiime off the period clock, since if it ever took significantly more than 15 sec. to ready the ball for play, the officials would take a time out, so it'll never reduce the time available to play the ball.

I don't see the point of requiring at least 5 on the line if there's a max of 4 in the backfield...unless there's also to be a change allowing positioning in "no man's land" -- which would be a dumb change! What else did they want to do -- cover cases where a team is playing with fewer than 9, and handicap them further??

Anybody know how many seasons running that tripping the runner had been legal in Fed? It wasn't long IIRC, for values of "long" that this old-timer's used to. Funny the order they choose to present rule changes in this article; maybe they want to live down the fact that legalizing tripping the runner had been a fairly recent change, so they bury the anmt of the change back. Hell, they chose to present some highly technical spec about the numbers on the uniforms above the tripping & horse collar changes!

Without play clocks at any of the schools we work at, I think the back judge is going to have his hands full with two different lengths of clocks to keep. 40 seconds for typical plays--25 seconds for special plays. I don't think most watches keep two saved alarms.

A lot of coaches who want their quarterbacks to come to the sideline every play are going to be surprised how quick 40 seconds is from the end of the play.

I assume the reason for 5 on the line has to do with the requirement to have 5 players number 50-79 on the line. Therefore there has to be 5 on the line.

Practically, there is no "no man's land." A player is either on or off and it can be a blade of grass that's the difference.


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I assume so too, but why have it? Why fix the problem of playing short if it's an end missing from the line, but not if an interior line player is?

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Usually, a series of football plays requires play begins with a "Scrimmage Down formation". Without a minimal formation requirement definition, there would be chaos.

This "revision" seems a, basically immaterial, attempt to pacify those whining for a, somewhat, meaningless semantics change, that should clarify the retention of a requirement for 5 players numbered between 50-79 and no more than 4 players, satisfying the requirements of being a "back".(both of which that have clearly existed, and was universally understood, for decades)

It's not meaningless when you've seen teams get penalized for illegal formation because they had 10 on the field.