The Commissioner engaged in significant lobbying on two of the rules that were passed last week -- Thursday night flexing and the kickoff fair catch rule. Some details have emerged regarding the extent to which Roger Goodell twisted arms to get what he wanted on one of those rules.
According to Albert Breer of SI.com, Goodell “could barely” finagle a 16-16 split on the latest modification to the kickoff during the annual meeting in March. When the owners reconvened last week in Minnesota, Goodell counted 13 “no” votes and one abstention via a show of hands on the first day of the Monday-Tuesday gathering.
Goodell, per Breer, said that the discussion would continue in a “privileged session,” with only owners present. After that meeting, eight of the “no” votes flipped to “yes.”
Eight votes. A full quarter of the league changed its position from against to for.
Breer writes that the Monday night lobbying of the 14 teams unwilling to say yes was conducted by Competition Committee chair Rich McKay, NFL executives Dawn Aponte and Jeff Miller, and 49ers owner Dr. John York.
Concerns still linger regarding the process, starting with the supposed factual basis for making the change. As explained last week, only eight of the supposed 19 concussions that occurred during kickoff returns could be clearly traced to the play in question based on the video of the plays and their aftermath. There is suspicion among some who opposed the move that the numbers were inflated to justify the rule change.
Likewise, some who participated in a brainstorming session that occurred between the March and May meetings believe the alternatives to adopting the college fair catch rule were not taken seriously, and that there was no institutional desire to deviate from the plan to implement the fair catch rule.
Ultimately, the plan worked. The vote, per Breer, was 26-5 with one abstention. The Ravens, Patriots, Bengals, Bears, and Lions persisted in their opposition to the change. And it happened, as Breer explains, when the league got the owners away from coaches and players and worked on enough of them to go along with what the league wanted.
It feels like another rule change driven by P.R. and/or liability concerns and not the best interests of the game. The league surely fears the consequences of a catastrophic injury during a kickoff return. The primary solution in recent years has been to create fewer occasions when kickoffs are returned.
It seems as if the goal is to make the play so irrelevant that eliminating it entirely won’t be viewed as a big deal, if/when that finally happens.
