Bill Belichick Proposes Four Rules to Competition Committee

The NFL's Competition Committee is having a call to discuss all of the rule proposals brought forth by the teams. There are 13 rule proposals, 7 bylaw proposals, and 1 resolution.

The Patriots set the tone with four rule proposals and some are more interesting than others.

First, Belichick proposed the extension of the field goal posts to make them 5 feet longer. We can all point to 2012's regular season game against the Ravens where a last second field goal was counted for the Ravens as the ball went over the top of the posts. If the posts were longer, it would have been no good and the Patriots would have been able to hold on for a victory.

Belichick also prosposes the league move the extra point kick back to the 25 yard line. We've talked about the implications of this decision:

1) Over the past five seasons, kickers have converted 99.1% of extra points (XP), or an Expected Point Added (EPA) of 0.991.

2) Over the past five seasons, kickers have converted 76.3% of field goals from the 25 yard line. When widening the range to field goals to the 23-27 lines, for the sake of additional data points, you have a more likely target of 78.9%. If we're using this bench mark as the new placement for extra points, the proposed EPA of an XP will decrease to 0.789.

3) Over the past five seasons, there have been 283 two-point conversion attempts. They have succeeded 48.8% of the time, or an EPA of 0.975. You'll note how similar this value is to the extra point play. While going for the extra point is the easier call for coaches to make, coaches who ask for the two point conversion will, over time, can expect to score roughly the same amount of points.

4) So when breaking down the decision from a long term point of reference, it would seem that this discussion is for naught. Moving the XP line would reduce its value and actually make the two-point conversion the smarter play to attempt.

The third proposal is for the addition of cameras on the boundary lines to supplement the television angles. This is a smart move and should all for better determination of whether or not a player is considered in or out of bounds.

His fourth proposal is to allow every play except for a scoring play to be challenged. There are some finicky rules that cost coaches time outs (challenge flags on turnovers) and where the language is cloudy. I support the decision to make challenges less constrained and make it easier for challenges to be thrown.

Other teams have posed moving the kick off to the 40 yard line (aka: entirely eliminating kick offs), allowing personal fouls to be reviewed, and a centralized replay command center to prevent botched booth reviews.

A more interesting proposal includes the elimination of the 1 yard pick zone (in response to the Patriots and the Broncos offensive techniques).

A bylaw proposal to increase the number of players on the Injured Reserve with Designation to Return should be useful, if it passes.