The CFL has been ahead of the curve on a number of officiating fronts, and they’ve taken another step forward today.
The Canadian Football League announced their rules changes for the coming year, and made it clear they want to curb dangerous hits to quarterbacks and other defenseless players.
One of the modifications allows the Command Centre (their version of monitoring from the NFL office in New York) to upgrade a 15-yard roughing the passer penalty to 25 yards “for a direct blow to the quarterback’s head or neck with the helmet when that player has a clear view to the quarterback, and there are no mitigating circumstances such as a quarterback ducking his head.”
If you’re going to talk about protecting quarterbacks, that’s definitely one way to do it.
“These changes will improve player health and safety and our committee is grateful to the Governors for their unanimous approval,” CFL senior director of officiating Darren Hackwood said. “We are looking forward to putting them into effect this season.”
The CFL is also allowing the Command Centre to help with called and non-called roughing penalties, and now will blow plays dead when a quarterback begins to “give themselves up” by sliding, regardless if it’s feet first or head first.
They also implemented new rules covering spearing, defining it as “when a player uses the top of their helmet as the primary point of contact to deliver a blow to an opponent,” and allowing for spearing penalties to be upgraded to 25 yards when such blows are delivered to the head and neck.
Also, if a player gets two 25-yard penalties in the same game, they will be ejected.
Moves like these allow teams to effectively police themselves, as the risk of such a large penalty should guarantee that coaches teach their team in a manner to prevent them.
The CFL beat the NFL to the punch on the expanded use of replay in the past, as challenging pass interference was happening north of the border before the NFL got around to it, an NFC Championship Game too late.
