The biggest story of the week came from the fact that the big toe (and the rest of the foot) of Chiefs receiver Kadarius Toney started a key play on the wrong side of the line of scrimmage.
Since the founding of the league, pro football has relied on sticks and chains to identify the line of scrimmage and the line to gain. There has to be a better way to do it. A more reliable way. A way that allows everyone to know: (1) where a given play starts; and (2) the precise amount of territory that needs to be secured.
There is. It comes from technology. Something the NFL remains reluctant to embrace.
The league should tear down the officiating function and reimagine it, using all currently-available technologies. For years, a company has been trying to get the league to adopt a laser-based system for projected the first-down line on the field, so that everyone can see exactly where the offense needs to go. Why not do it?
Why not also use the same technology to project the line of scrimmage?
Do we want the proper pre-snap alignment to be a guessing game? Do we want players to rely on officials telling them if they are or aren’t on the line? Do we want a player to chronically line up a little bit offside but never have it called until a key moment in the game?
If the line of scrimmage is projected onto the field, there’s no ambiguity for the players — and no inconsistency from the officials. We’ll all know when a player is or isn’t offside.
If the laser-based approach won’t work (and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t), another technology-based solution would entail putting a sensor on the front end of the cleat. The sensor would make the shoe vibrate more and more the closer the player’s foot gets to the line of scrimmage, as determined by an electric beam projected between down markers on either side of the field.
These are just a couple of ideas devised by a very low-tech mind for getting the most out of a high-tech world. The league needs to encourage and cultivate (and spend money on) ideas like this for making the game easier to officiate — and for making pointless penalties moot.
When we watch football, we’re not tuning in to see whether 22 players can successfully get themselves in the right position before the ball is snapped. We’re watching for what comes after the snap. Why not look for a way to make penalties like the Toney foul never happen?
One argument against it comes from the simple fact that it was the biggest story of the week, and that it would have been a non-story if Toney wasn’t offside. It amounted to more free publicity for a league that, thanks to non-stop coverage of the games, gets billions of dollars in free advertising from countless media outlets.
Still, is this the kind of publicity they should want? Conversation sparked fundamentally by the existence of significant flaws within the fabric of the officiating function?
It’s far better to avoid issues like this. And there are ways to get there, if the NFL is willing to spend the time and the money to do it.