2026 proposed rule changes:

[RedRamage]

These are proposed rule changes from the competition committee:

1. Kicking team can declare for an onsides kick at any point, not just in the 4th qtr. - I really don't care one way or the other on this. While I do like the new kick off rules in general I do miss the "surprise" onsides kick potential. This rule doesn't bring back the surprise, so... whatever.

2. Remove the incentive to kick out of bounds when kicking from the 50. - If you'll recall the Lions did this once last year. If I remember the details of this: If there's a penalty that gets enforced on the kickoff, that changes where the ball is placed if the kick goes out of bounds. I think it's goes to like the 20 instead of the 40. This makes sense to me as I don't think the intention of the rule was to allow this.

3. Expansion of Replay/Ejections. Basically league personal can consult with on field refs regarding ejecting players WITHOUT the refs needing to flag the play. Right now if the refs miss an obvious flagrant or non-football act and don't flag it, replay can't come back and tell the refs they should look at something and consider an ejections. This would fix that and I think it's a good rule change.

4. Replacement Referee Contingency. This is apparently just being proposed for one year, but it would allow the NFL officiating department to overrule "clear and obvious" bad calls if a work stoppage involving the NFL Ref. Association occurs. Anyone else remember "Replacement Refs"? Ugh...

5. Changes to receiving team alignment during kicks. I think this is to reduce the minimum number of players who need to be on the restraint line.

All in all I don't see anything too earth shattering here.

 

[Mr.TaterSalad]

Given the poor state of officiating, I think absolutely everything needs to be reviewable and challengeable. The pick play call against Tesla in the Pittsburgh game should have been challenged, reviewed, and overturned. That was not a penalty on Tesla. The NFL officials get too many calls wrong and therefore, they just need to make it all reviewable. Yes, it will slow down the game, but I don't care. I'd rather the right call be made and the right outcome take place over a game that gets extended by few minutes too many.

The other rules change that needs to take place is the implementation of a referee clock. Much like a pitch clock in baseball or the play clock in football, refs need to be put on a clock. The referees need to have a certain amount of time to make a call and throw a flag if they miss it in real time. The refs have one minute, from the time the play was blown dead, to make a decision to throw a flag. The Lions would have benefited from this as the call in the Kansas City game for Illegal Motion on Goff would not have been made.

Additionally, coaches/coaching staff need real time audio of what the refs are communicating to one another and what they are communicating with the people upstairs and in New York. I have no doubt that the NFL crew in the New York league office told the officials on field about the Illegal Motion on Goff and that is when it was decided to throw the flag. We need to know what is said at all times by officials and to them from others.

[RedRamage]

25 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

I think absolutely everything needs to be reviewable and challengeable. ... Yes, it will slow down the game, but I don't care. I'd rather the right call be made and the right outcome take place over a game that gets extended by few minutes too many.

I would tend to agree.
 

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The refs have one minute, from the time the play was blown dead, to make a decision to throw a flag. 

This seems actually contradictory to your previous desire to have the game called right, even if it seems to slow down the game a bit.

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Additionally, coaches/coaching staff need real time audio of what the refs are communicating to one another and what they are communicating with the people upstairs and in New York. 

They actually do this in the UFL and it works pretty nicely... you can actually hear what they are reviewing and what they are looking at and why they made the decision on air. I liked it a lot.

Of course... then they'd cut to interviewing the review guy during the game and asking him all the questions again when was annoying, but watching the process itself was interesting.

[Sports_Freak]

1 hour ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

Given the poor state of officiating, I think absolutely everything needs to be reviewable and challengeable. The pick play call against Tesla in the Pittsburgh game should have been challenged, reviewed, and overturned. That was not a penalty on Tesla. The NFL officials get too many calls wrong and therefore, they just need to make it all reviewable. Yes, it will slow down the game, but I don't care. I'd rather the right call be made and the right outcome take place over a game that gets extended by few minutes too many.

The other rules change that needs to take place is the implementation of a referee clock. Much like a pitch clock in baseball or the play clock in football, refs need to be put on a clock. The referees need to have a certain amount of time to make a call and throw a flag if they miss it in real time. The refs have one minute, from the time the play was blown dead, to make a decision to throw a flag. The Lions would have benefited from this as the call in the Kansas City game for Illegal Motion on Goff would not have been made.

Additionally, coaches/coaching staff need real time audio of what the refs are communicating to one another and what they are communicating with the people upstairs and in New York. I have no doubt that the NFL crew in the New York league office told the officials on field about the Illegal Motion on Goff and that is when it was decided to throw the flag. We need to know what is said at all times by officials and to them from others.

All good points. And I'll add to this: The play clock needs a hard set. Just like basketball, a set play clock needs to be strictly enforced. No more of a ref looking at the clock and then seeing if the ball was snapped. Have a buzzer go off in the refs ear if need be.

[MichiganCardinal]

18 hours ago, RedRamage said:

3. Expansion of Replay/Ejections. Basically league personal can consult with on field refs regarding ejecting players WITHOUT the refs needing to flag the play. Right now if the refs miss an obvious flagrant or non-football act and don't flag it, replay can't come back and tell the refs they should look at something and consider an ejections. This would fix that and I think it's a good rule change.

Can we call this the Metcalf rule?

Wouldn't be a complete offseason without a new rule being created to fix something that screwed the Lions the prior year.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

18 hours ago, RedRamage said:

This seems actually contradictory to your previous desire to have the game called right, even if it seems to slow down the game a bit.

I see your point there. But the more time you give the refs, the more time they/the league have to make up a call. I try hard not to be a fan that weighs into conspiracy theories, but on occasion I do. One that I believe is that the league made up the call on Goff this past year for the illegal motion and then buzzed it down to the refs and told them to take the TD off the board. Were the refs on a play clock they would never have had the time to be told by the league to call that. Another example is in Dallas, both with the picked up flag against Pettigrew for the non-PI call and the Taylor Decker TD coming off the board. A play clock would have prevented the refs from huddling and making the errant decision to overturn those calls. Maybe there is a better way to do this than a play clock for refs, but something has to be done to ensure they don't have the time to confer and make things up on the fly as they have done.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

29 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said:

Can we call this the Metcalf rule?

Wouldn't be a complete offseason without a new rule being created to fix something that screwed the Lions the prior year.

This rule better pass. It's unreal that you can sucker punch a fan and not be thrown out of a game. Were I Metcalf I wouldn't have risked hurting my hand. I would have grabbed a chair and hit the fan with it. No reason to risk hurting your hand with a punch and it's clear and obvious he wouldn't have gotten tossed had he gone full WWE on the fan with a chair or blunt object of some kind.

[MichiganCardinal]

4 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

This rule better pass. It's unreal that you can sucker punch a fan and not be thrown out of a game. Were I Metcalf I wouldn't have risked hurting my hand. I would have grabbed a chair and hit the fan with it. No reason to risk hurting your hand with a punch and it's clear and obvious he wouldn't have gotten tossed had he gone full WWE on the fan with a chair or blunt object of some kind.

The real fun could have come had a zealous MSP or DPD supervisor decided it was enough to arrest Metcalf on site.