Here's a good article on how the NFL is changing from NY Times. Nothing new is being discussed that we haven't heard already but it does reiterate that the league is changing and it's all about throwing the ball. I hope we can get a decent QB and air it out a little. Ground and Pound is a thing of the past.
On Pro Football
By BEN SHPIGEL
As Tony Romo, the Dallas Cowboys’ quarterback, dropped back to pass last Sunday in an N.F.L. playoff game, the Green Bay Packers’ Clay Matthews dashed past an offensive lineman and into the backfield.
Sensing pressure, Romo stepped to his right. He threw an incomplete pass as Matthews closed in, then braced himself for a hit that never came. Instead of leveling him, Matthews, one of the league’s most fearsome linebackers, pulled up. The only contact was a chest bump, and Matthews raised his hands to signal that he had done nothing wrong.
This is what football can look like in the concussion-era N.F.L., a climate in which some of the brutal hits that long appealed to fans are increasingly a fading memory as quarterbacks, long the most protected players on the field, and receivers are given free rein to dazzle. Through rules changes, stricter enforcement, and player fines and suspensions, the N.F.L. in recent years has sought to remove the most extreme violence from an inherently violent sport.
The effect can be seen in the record books and in the television ratings, in pass-happy and high-scoring games that have spurred the N.F.L. to ever greater viewership. The biggest beneficiaries are the game’s most recognizable stars — the quarterbacks who have largely been free of serious injury and are leading the most dynamic passing offenses in league history.
Graphic | By Many Measures, It’s a Quarterbacks’ LeagueRules changes to protect quarterbacks and receivers have resulted in a further explosion in passing offense.
This season, more touchdown passes (804) were thrown and a greater percentage of passes were completed (62.6 percent) than ever before. Teams called pass plays 60.3 percent of the time, according to the Football Outsiders database. Nine quarterbacks threw at least 30 touchdowns. Previously, the season high for quarterbacks reaching that mark was five — in 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010.
Including the postseason, according to ESPN Stats and Information, the four quarterbacks in Sunday’s conference championship games — Tom Brady of New England, Andrew Luck of Indianapolis, Aaron Rodgers of Green Bay and Russell Wilson of defending champion Seattle — have accounted for at least 72 percent of their teams’ offenses.
“We’re all smart enough to know that the marquee quarterbacks are one of the reasons why so many fans are interested in football,” said the former N.F.L. coach Steve Mariucci, now an analyst for NFL Network. “If we lose a Brett Favre or a Peyton Manning or an Aaron Rodgers for the season, the league isn’t the same, the interest isn’t the same, and the production and quality of the football isn’t the same.”
Mariucci served as Favre’s position coach in Green Bay in the mid-1990s, when Favre began his streak of 321 consecutive starts, and he began tracking how many other quarterbacks would play every game in a season. In 1992, the year Favre’s streak began, there were eight. In 1993 and 1994, seven.
“That was back when they were hitting quarterbacks in the head, hitting them in the leg,” Mariucci said. “It was like kill the quarterback and you win.”
No longer. In 2012, a staggering 20 quarterbacks started every game. Last season, it was 17. This season, there were 16 — including 9 playing for the 12 playoff teams.
A serious knee injury to Brady precipitated a clarification of a rule that has aided him and his passing brethren. When he tore a knee ligament in the Patriots’ first game of 2008, league owners reacted during the off-season by outlawing the sort of tackle that hurt him — a defender on the ground lunging at a quarterback’s lower legs. At those same meetings, owners voted to assess a 15-yard penalty for hitting a defenseless receiver in the head.
If the increasing specialization of quarterbacks and the proliferation of spread offenses had been urging the N.F.L. toward its transformation into a passing league, then those rule changes — and others — only accelerated the process.
Penalties for defensive holding — often called on defenders seeking to slow receivers with a grab of the jersey or an arm blocking the way — have increased in the last four seasons, allowing receivers to run routes mostly unimpeded.
Illegal contact, called on defenders who touch receivers more than 5 yards beyond the line of scrimmage, was re-emphasized by officials in 2004 after New England defenders mugged the Colts in the A.F.C. title game, and again last off-season after the Seahawks’ hulking defensive backs thwarted Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos in the Super Bowl. Teams committed an average of 3.28 illegal contact penalties this season, compared with 1.19 in 2013, according to NFLPenalties.com.
Tackling, one of the sport’s fundamental elements, is more restricted than ever. Defenders like Matthews must stop themselves if they are two steps from a quarterback in the pocket who has released the ball — though, to be fair, on Sunday he did not always do so. When they do tackle, it cannot be too high — that’s a hit to the head. Or too low — that could hurt the knees.
“Through my six years, I’ve learned when you need to pull off and when you can perform a legal hit, so that was one of those I probably would have got us a flag if I was to have gone through with it,” Matthews said of the aborted hit on Romo. “That’s part of the job responsibility for guys in my position who have chances to hit the quarterback. You just have to know when you can go through with the hit as well as when you need to pull off.”
There are similar constraints when trying to bring down receivers, lest a defender be called for a penalty known somewhat ominously as targeting.
“There’s a certain physicality that you just can’t play with anymore,” said the former N.F.L. safety Adam Archuleta, now an analyst for CBS. “In this current climate, I really don’t know how as a defensive player you can possibly do your job the way it’s traditionally supposed to be done.”
He added: “You see defensive players turning down hits, whereas 10 years ago, if you did the same thing, you wouldn’t survive your meeting room because you’d be exposed and you’d be called out. Your courage and your toughness would be questioned, let’s just say that. That’s real. Now you almost have to turn down certain hits because you’re protected by the rules. All you have to tell your coach is, ‘I didn’t want to get a 15-yard penalty.’ “
Offenses around the league are capitalizing on that vulnerability. A popular saying in football — that three things can happen when the ball is thrown, and two (incompletions and interceptions) are bad — no longer seems to apply. Teams are far more willing to throw downfield, especially on third-and-long, Mariucci said, because of the possibility of drawing illegal contact, pass interference or a helmet-to-helmet call.
“I think teams take advantage of that,” said Patriots safety Devin McCourty, who added: “I think that’s why you see a lot of change even in the secondary with different guys playing safety and different guys being on the field. You see more defensive backs just everywhere, whether it be in a so-called linebacker position just to try to outwork a passing game because of how it is now.”
Archuleta retired before the 2008 season, before his attitude when bearing down on a quarterback — “to saw him in half and get the best shot you possibly could on him” — became obsolete. Recently, he said, he spoke with a defensive coordinator who told him that he no longer blitzed as much because the gains no longer outweighed the risks. Even if the blitz did not produce a sack, the defender would still hit the quarterback, wearing him down.
When asked Wednesday whether he felt any safer in the pocket than he used to, Rodgers praised the league for instituting the changes, particularly on defenseless players, but acknowledged that hazards still existed.
“Avoiding the hits high,” Rodgers said, “but it also brings in the hits at knee level, which I think are dangerous as well.”
A common complaint among defensive players is that however hard they try to avoid helmet-to-helmet contact, they find it almost impossible to account for a last-second movement by a receiver that results in such a hit. When Bart Scott played linebacker in the N.F.L., he would sometimes see defenders, furious about a fine for a high hit they perceived as unfair, try to tackle low, around an opponent’s knees.
Scott mentioned Broncos safety T. J. Ward, who, when he played for Cleveland last season, delivered a low hit on Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski that resulted in torn knee ligaments.
“Hit you in the head, maybe you get a concussion; hit you in the legs, you’re not going to play again,” Scott said, adding: “Gronkowski, how do you think I’m going to take him down? You’re telling me he’s defenseless and he outweighs me by 50 pounds and he’s running full speed and I’m coming from the side and weigh 205 pounds? I can’t hit him high, well, I’ll chop him down like a tree.”
Gronkowski did not stay down for long. Returning nine months after his injury, he again formed a formidable tandem with Brady. Among tight ends, Gronkowski’s 1,124 receiving yards and 12 touchdowns led the league.
Ken Belson, Pat Borzi and Peter May contributed reporting.
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