Referee Glen Johnson on Saturday, July 7, 2007. CFL PHOTO/K. Rodriguez
REGINA – Canadian Football League fans have always been vocal when it comes to the men who patrol the field in striped shirts.
And it turns out the league is trying to listen.
Members of the CFL’s rules committee have put their collective heads together here at CFL Week and proposed some rule changes for 2017, specifically to the coaches’ challenges to improve the flow of the game.
“The game itself, I think, is in great shape,” said Glen Johnson, Senior Vice President of Football for the CFL and Chair of the league’s rules committee. “Higher scoring last year. Highest quarterback ratings last year, highest average return on kick ratio… we did a lot of things over the last three or four years that opened up the field.
“No yards (penalties are) down, Illegal blocks are down. There was a real feeling of not trying to tinker too much with that.”
That said, the league is willing to adapt on the fly with changes, as was the case last year when there was a change midway through the season that saw coaches put a time out at risk with every challenge. That resulted in in a 15 per cent drop on first challenges and 29 per cent on second challenges. That change will carry forward into 2017, meaning a timeout is at risk for every coaches’ challenge that is incorrect.
As well, that change resulted in a 50 per cent drop in illegal contact penalties, and there is a hope that trend will continue into this season.
A referee signals during the Hamilton Tiger Cats CFL game against the Argos in Toronto on Friday June 28, 2013. (CFL PHOTO – J.P. Moczulski)
The rules committee also proposed a change that will affect roughing the passer penalties. Under the new proposal, roughing the passer penalties will remain true to the current rule which applies to a quarterback being in the act of passing or potentially passing or sliding feet-first across the line of scrimmage. The other infractions that may occur to the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage – facemask penalties, horse-collar tackles – will no longer be challengeable. Ditto for actions that occur when the QB is across the line of scrimmage running with the ball.
Among the other proposed changes:
– Low blocks or blindside blocks on kick penalties or change of possession plays will be increased from 10 to 15 yards;
– In an effort to speed up the flow of the game, coaches will no longer be allowed to challenge a play following a TV commercial timeout. The change will see a coach required to challenge a play within the first 30 seconds of the TV break; currently coaches could wait the whole break before deciding to challenge.
Further to that, TSN is now planning on going to commercial on every challenge they can. The network and the league are estimating that 80 per cent of challenges will now be done during a commercial, up from 20 per cent last year.
– The committee has proposed to increase the duties of the video official in the Command Centre – the ‘Eye in the Sky’ – so they can correct errors when a flag has been thrown for a line of scrimmage penalty (an offside being called, for example, when it should have been illegal procedure).
Also, they can now add unnecessary roughness infractions to plays in which a similar penalty has already been called or when an illegal contact on a receiver call needs to be changed to defensive pass interference because the ball had already been thrown.
To that end, however, the league wants to ensure that any corrections only involve the players involved in the infraction and not go searching for other penalties.
“What we don’t want to do is to begin officiating the game in its entirety from the Command Centre,” said Johnson. “We think that’s a very dangerous precedent, a slippery slope. But once a flag is down and the game is stopped, we’re going to adjudicate that. The intent there is to just make sure we’re getting the call correct.
“What we don’t want the officials to do is scour every play and go look for other penalties. That’s not the intent. Once a flag is down, anything related to that flag should just be made right. We should just fix that and get it correct.”
– Finally, the committee is proposing a change that would prevent the return team on a kicking play from putting a player on the field at the last second prior to the snap and hide him so he can receive a lateral pass from the kick returner – a variation of the ‘sleeper’ play.
All the recommendations of the rules committee will be reviewed by the league’s competition committee and ultimately must approved by its Board of Governors before they go into effect.
