2009 NFL Rule Changes

At the owners committee today, four new rules were passed, all concerning player safety:

1. A blindside block deliver to a defender's head with the blocker's head, forearm or shoulder will result in a 15-yard penalty. While football is undoubtedly a contact sport, head protection has long been one of the important issues surrounding rule changes, and it's good that the defenders are getting a little protection on the blindside. No offense to Hines Ward, but I trust that most people who witnessed his Week 7 block on Kieth Rivers will agree that it is worthy of being considered for a penalty call.

2. Initial contact to the head of a defenseless reciever is also punishable by a 15-yard penalty. As with the first rule change, this is to protect the player's head in a vulnerable situation (Eric Smith on Anquan Boldin, anyone?). Good rule change from where I'm standing.

3. On kickoffs, any single blocking wedge can be limited to only two players. I'm not familiar with what the previous size was limited too, but I think this is a somewhat detrimental rule. The unpredictablily of the return game is one of the things that makes the NFL exciting, and removing the ability to block with more than two players in a single wedge would seem to make returning a kick to the house a more difficult proposition.

4. On an onside kick, the kicking team can have no more than five players pursuing the ball. This rule seems to stack the odds of the recovery of an onside kick even more in the favor of the recieving team. Don't quote me on this, but most onside kicks fail anyway. I could understand the logic behind this rule if onside kicks were being recovered on a regular basis, but I don't believe that no NFL team currently has a kicker capable of consistently delivering an onside kick just right. I don't see how this affects player safety, and it will likely only marginally affect gameplay.