Accused of being the No Fun League, the NFL is considering becoming the No Fraud League.
A crackdown on unusual deceitful plays is being debated after successive weeks when quarterbacks Kordell Stewart of the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kurt Warner of the St. Louis Rams turned thespians and fooled defenses.
The league resisted the temptation to distribute a memo this weekend to make such trick plays illegal.
“Cooler heads prevailed and we decided to monitor it the rest of the season,” said Mike Pereira, the NFL’s director of officiating. “We’ll address it in the off-season.”
What Stewart and Warner did straddled the line between normal pro football-type deception and silly schoolyard deception, but Pereira acknowledged the line is fine and disputable.
Against Minnesota two weeks ago, Stewart walked away from center as if he were going to call a timeout and the center snapped the ball directly to running back Jerome Bettis. Against San Francisco last week, Warner disgustedly unbuckled his chin strap and walked away as the center snapped the ball directly to running back Marshall Faulk. In both cases the plays worked.
The teams cleared the trick plays with officials ahead of time. In Stewart’s case, he had to stop and establish himself as a back because he had put his hands under center.
Warner operated from the shotgun, so he already was considered a back in motion and didn’t have to stop. But such technicalities aren’t the problem, Pereira said.
“To me there’s two types of deception,” Pereira said. “There’s deception that’s a natural part of the game, that involves an act of football, such as play-action passes, pump fakes. Those are football-type plays.
“The question is going to be how far do we go in terms of deception and how do we determine what is and what is not a football-related act?”
Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning fooled the New Orleans Saints and the officials four weeks ago by faking a spike to stop the clock and then running for a touchdown. It was similar to a play by Miami’s Dan Marino several years ago when Marino faked a spike and threw a touchdown pass against the New York Jets.
The problem with Manning’s trickery is officials inadvertently blew a whistle, anticipating the spike, and killed the play.
League officials are trying to decide whether such plays fall into the category of putting more than 11 players into a huddle and running off the field before the play in an effort to limit the offense vs. defense chess match of situation substitution.
Huddling with more than 11 is illegal. Teams also used to try to sneak a “lonesome end” onto the field near the sideline, hoping he would blend into the background undetectable to defensive backs.
There also is concern over fake timeouts causing injury to unsuspecting defensive players, but aren’t trap blocks and play-action passes designed to catch defenders unaware too?
“What you end up trying to factor is the intent of the rule,” Pereira said. “You have to be careful because if you say this specific play is not legal, then what about the next play?”
Pereira said the league office did not get complaints or calls for clarification from coaches because of the tricks. That was one reason the league didn’t overreact and make a rules change with four weeks left in the season. But the league will be watching closely for other creative ploys. Pereira finds it interesting that after so many years of football, nobody has thought of such things on this level before.
“Makes you wonder what we’re going to see going forward,” Pereira said.
If a quarterback tucks the ball under his jersey and tries to run unnoticed except for the beer gut, Pereira said that is already covered by rule. That Stewart and Warner play quarterback for the top two teams in the league also provides food for thought. If deceit is allowed to flourish unchallenged, the Bears and other teams might start scouting for quarterbacks at Second City or Chuck’s House of Magic.
Clearly this is a time for the wisdom and insight of the league’s former vice president of football operations, George Young, who died Dec. 8 after a short illness.
Both ways: League parity by definition is supposed to limit the number of dominant teams. If more teams are competitive, fewer teams are outstanding. With only a quarter of the season remaining, there is only one game this weekend without any playoff implications: Minnesota at Detroit.
Yet with so many competitive teams and close, unpredictable games, there still are seven teams with winning percentages of .750 or better. That ties the NFL record through 13 weeks set in 1968, the pre-free agency, pre-parity era. The elite: Pittsburgh (10-2), St. Louis (10-2), San Francisco (9-3), the Bears (9-3), Green Bay (9-3), Miami (9-3) and Oakland (9-3).
Peyton’s pace: With a league-high 20 interceptions to go with his 20 touchdown passes, the Colts’ Manning is under close scrutiny.
Dad Archie Manning, who routinely threw more interceptions than touchdown passes while playing for poor teams, said: “He’s aggressive, and maybe some of that is working against him in this situation he’s in. But I still think–and I’m not defending him–to me, it’s the American way. He will prevail, I promise you. He will prevail.”
Peyton Manning, although unhappy when coach Jim Mora labeled turnovers against San Francisco “disgraceful,” has been defending his coach ever since.
“He’s the only coach I ever want to have when I’m playing here,” Peyton said. “Not to belabor the point, but coach Mora was one of the last guys at my wedding. We couldn’t make him leave. I was waiting for him to leave so I could leave to go to the hotel and go to my honeymoon.
“So he and I have always had a really strong relationship.”
J.J. and J.J.: The NFL hasn’t been quite the same since the 1994 Dallas divorce of Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson. So when Johnson referred to the made over Jones as “Michael Jackson” during a TV interview last Monday night, the former Cowboys coach said he was only having fun with his former boss.
“Actually I started off the interview by saying how impressed I am with the Cowboys,” Johnson told the Dallas Morning News on Tuesday.
“The team is playing really hard, and they’re really improved. The consistency at the quarterback position is the only thing they’re missing right now. The concern is Troy’s [Aikman, who is retired] health. I was saying if he had been there and stayed healthy, I think they could be a first-place team in the NFC East.”
In the TV interview, Johnson said, “If Michael Jackson, I mean Jerry Jones, would have kept Troy Aikman, I think they’d be in first place.”
Last off-season Jones lost 55 pounds and apparently underwent plastic surgery.
On his weekly radio show, Jones replied, “That’s just Jimmy being Jimmy.”
High priest: Think the Baltimore Ravens would like to have re-signed free-agent running back Priest Holmes? In Kansas City, Holmes quietly has taken the league lead in rushing with 1,146 yards and combined yardage (1,635).
If you’ve never heard of him, don’t feel lonely. Denver safety George Coghill, who faces Holmes on Sunday, was quizzed and prompted on the league leader and still couldn’t come up with the name.
The Ravens are begging for a running back after injuries to Jamal Lewis and rookie Jason Brookins.
“From a financial standpoint, it would have been prohibitive for us to pay the money and he was deserving of it,” Ravens coach Brian Billick said. “There’s no better man in the world than Priest Holmes.”
“But more than the money, which sounds silly to say in this day and age, Priest was really looking for an opportunity to go someplace where he could be the legitimate starter.”
Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil: “The more you give him the ball, the better he gets. No one has ever given him the ball as many times as we’ve given it to him, so maybe nobody has ever found out how good he is.”
