Brady rule will have minimal effect
Brown: "If you take that rule seriously, they'll find somebody else to play your position"
Here's a prediction for the 2009 NFL season: The so-called "Tom Brady rule" won't change a thing about how defensive players attack the quarterback. It certainly will lead to more penalties. It might even produce more reprimands from the league office. What it won't do, however, is create the kind of impact the league was hoping for when its competition committee announced adoption of the measure during last week's league meetings.
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The Brady rule essentially is another attempt by the league to protect its most treasured assets -- quarterbacks. It specifically prohibits a defender on the ground from lunging or diving at a quarterback's legs unless that defender has been blocked or fouled into the signal-caller. The main purpose of this rule is to avoid the kind of severe knee injury that ended the season of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady in September, when Kansas City Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard crashed into Brady's leg after being blocked to the ground on a pass play. The league apparently feels such acts cross a critical line.
The reason the rule won't work is that it's attempting to control the kind of play that usually happens in a split second. When Pollard injured Brady, he was trying to make a big play in a key moment while Brady was stepping into a downfield throw. Unfortunately for Brady, Pollard's instinctive decision sidelined the Pro Bowl quarterback before he had played even a full quarter in 2008. Pollard -- who had been blocked to the turf but not into Brady -- was not flagged or fined for his play. Pollard would have faced penalties if this new policy was in place.
“” -- Eagles CB Sheldon Brown on Brady rule
Nobody is going to take the time to get up off the ground to hit a quarterback. So you'll have guys make the play, pay the fines, write it off on their taxes and move on. Whoever made that rule is crazy.
The reality here is that it's impossible to control a play that happens in such a bang-bang manner. Football players just aren't wired to harness their aggressiveness in such a short window of time, and they surely aren't going to be thinking about getting back on their feet to make sacks.
"You're just going to see a lot more fines because of this [rule]," said Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Sheldon Brown. "Nobody is going to take the time to get up off the ground to hit a quarterback. So you'll have guys make the play, pay the fines, write it off on their taxes and move on. Whoever made that rule is crazy."
Actually, the new rule is essentially a clarification of a roughing the passer rule that already is in place to prevent defenders from hitting quarterbacks at or below the knee on pass plays. But here's the thing: That previously existing rule made some sense. The league wanted to keep defenders from purposely going low on quarterbacks, so it found a way to do so. The decision-makers correctly saw the danger in having overly aggressive diving at the legs of passers.
That rule also was good because it didn't require defensive players to do anything unnatural to stay competitive. This clarification, which essentially instructs prone defensive players to get back on their feet before resuming pursuit of the quarterback, clearly creates an advantage for the offense, which has been the league's trend lately.
As Patriots owner Robert Kraft said in the Boston Globe: "So whatever we can do to protect quarterbacks and to minimize the opportunity of them being taken out with a year-ending injury I would support. It's not good for the league. What makes it special is special players. It's like going to see a great movie and the star isn't in the movie. It's the same principle."
Great. Now you've got a league where wide receivers can't be touched five yards beyond the line of scrimmage and quarterbacks might as well be playing with flags attached to their waists. As one Pro Bowl defensive player -- who prefers to remain anonymous -- told ESPN.com, "They basically want the score to be 100-0 in every game that gets played."
You really can't blame players for being testy about this subject. They know it says plenty when Brady's injury last season can lead to a quick rule revision in the offseason. They also know it says something else when the "tuck rule" is still on the books nearly eight years after Brady made that rule infamous in a playoff win over the Oakland Raiders in his second season. Instead of tinkering with a regulation that caused so much controversy at the time -- it appeared that Brady had fumbled late in the game, only to have the play overturned because of a rule that clarifies when a quarterback's throwing motion begins and ends -- the competition committee never changed the tuck rule.
This isn't an attempt to criticize Brady, by the way. He just happened to be the player who wound up in the middle of both situations. It's just worth noting that the league has become quite clear about the fact that defensive players are basically extras in a game that caters to its offensive stars. Defenders can have their interceptions and their sacks, but there's going to be hell to pay if they endanger the real meal tickets.
It's becoming such an issue that it's fair to start wondering whether all these rules changes won't have some impact on how many future defensive players will merit serious Hall of Fame consideration. Really, how can they stand out in a game that is so skewed in favor of the offense? But that's a topic for another day. There are more than enough issues for those defenders to be concerned with after the recent revision of this rule.
To be honest, this wouldn't be so offensive if the topic was horse-collar tackling, which the league was correct to outlaw a few years back. It also wouldn't be such a big deal if we were talking about helmet-to-helmet hits by defenders on pass plays. There was more than enough information to show that those plays were causing a disconcerting amount of injuries. That mountain of evidence made it clear that the league had to do something to improve its safety measures.
The competition committee said it saw enough film to know that the "Brady rule" makes just as much sense, but it doesn't feel that way right now. It sounds more like the league wants defenders simply to be more cautious, which just isn't fair to those players. As Brown said, "If you take that rule seriously, they will find somebody else to play your position." In other words, the league can change the rules all it wants, but there's only so much that players can control once the games actually begin.
Senior writer Jeffri Chadiha covers the NFL for ESPN.com.
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