Hey guys!
Some NFL stuff happened this week!! A couple of league rules were changed and DYM approves!
Overtime:
They shortened overtime from 15 min to 10.
First of all - We love that this is a "player safety initiative." No doubt, playing less football is safer than playing more football. Shouts to Doug Whaley ... I gotta admit tho, that does make this feel a bit like a slippery slope. Like if people keep saying, out loud, that football is too dangerous then maybe in the future there'll be no NFL, like, there's only E-Sports Madden leagues. Ultimately we'd be OK with this, long as we can still play Fantasy E-Sports Madden.
But for real tho - Stats from NFL Research indicate the new rule could create as many as 5 additional ties per season.
Let me tell you why this is a good thing:
Do ties suck? Sure they do, nobody like ties.
But ya know what's worse than ties? Tie-Breakers.
People who complain about ties in football games fail to realize that those individual ties help prevent mind-numbing end-of-season ties in the standings. The NFL has some of the most well-worn tie-breaking rules in all of sports. Everybody knows them cause we have to use them every fucking year. Here's the basic math: The problem is there's only 16 games in an NFL season, so without ties, there's only 17 different records that a teams can have:
0-16, 1-15, 2-14, 3-13, 4-12, 5-11, 6-10, 7-9, 8-8, 9-7, 10-6, 11-5, 12-4, 13-3, 14-2, 15-1, 16-0.
That's it.
That makes a 23% chance of a tie in any given 4-team division. With 8 divisions, the season ending with a tie somewhere in the league is nearly guaranteed.
That's where we get so much of this "IN THE HUNT" bullshit right here.
Every fan thinks their team is "IN THE HUNT" in week 12 cause there's always some arcane math that gets their team into a tie by winning this game but not that one and the other teams loses that one but not this. It's so well'known and pervasive because we all know that in the end, there's ALWAYS ties in the standings. Every year somebody gets in to the playoffs with inflated division and conference records because they SMOKED the Browns twice (also inflated net points, tie-breaker #8).
Once we add in a decent chance of a tie in any given week, there are now 33 potential combinations of W-L-T:
0-15-1, 1-14-1, 2-13-1, 3-12-1, 4-11-1, 5-10-1, 6-9-1, 7-8-1, 8-7-1, 9-6-1, 10-5-1, 11-4-1, 12-3-1, 13-2-1, 14-1-1, 15-0-1.
If we can get a few more ties, they will inevitably create separation in the standings and could help avoid some stupid stupid tie-breakers.
TOUCHDOWN CELEBRATIONS:
TD celebrations are back!!! Using the "ball as a prop" and "group celebrations" are legal again.
This feels like another slippery-slope that we entirely support. We are one step closer to a league-wide crossbar dunk contest at the pro bowl.
That sideshow with the helicopter punts and that weak ass dodgeball game was absolute trash, Dunk contest or home run derby are the only options, and this new rule paves the way.
We also love that Goodell said they're gonna "keep high standards" on the TD dancing. He's like, yo, there's Dancing With The Stars champions in this league! Odell Beckham and Jarvis Landry were in Breakin'!!!
Don't come with that weak shit.
Looking at you. Kelce!!!
HAVE A GREAT MEMORIAL DAY, EVERYBODY!!
