NFL Penalty Parity, Part 1

Now that we’re midway through the NFL season, I thought it would be good to review some of the penalties and how their consequences could be re-worked. This is needed mainly because the penalties are skewed toward favoring the offense. To restore some balance to the game, we need to even up the penalties.

Pass Interference
If the defense commits a pass interference penalty (DPI), the offense gets the ball at the spot of the foul (as many yards as necessary) and an automatic first down. But if the offense commits pass interference (OPI), it’s only 10 yards and the offense gets to try again.

There are a couple of way to remedy this disparity.
A. Make OPI the same magnitude as DPI – the defense gets the ball at the spot of the foul and it’s first down for them. The spirit of NFL DPI is that it assumes the receiver would have made the catch. Why not do the same for OPI?

B. Apply the yardage only – whatever the spot of the foul was, walk the offense back that amount. Similar spirit as the original rule – punish the offender the amount of the foul.

C. Make OPI an automatic 4th down. Since DPI is automatic first down (drastically favoring the offense), OPI should match it (drastically punishing the offense).

D. Make it 10 yards plus loss of down. I think this is the most palatable change because it’s not so drastic. It’s not the most even, but why should the offense get to retry the down on which they fouled?

A man of great anger will bear the penalty, For if you rescue him, you will only have to do it again.

Proverbs 19:19

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This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 7:59 am and has been carefully placed in the Sports category.

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