| Excessive locality of solution is an engineering bad practice. Think of the crash like a train... if the locomotive can't get traction to go fast, the passenger cars can't fly thru the air at 100 MPH in a derailment, can they? So eliminate shoe cleats. Maybe eliminate shoes and play barefoot on grass. If your feet literally can't accelerate you to 15 mph in one meters length, then you can't hit someone's head at 15 mph when you eventually get there. There are other interesting rule peculiarities that have nothing to do with equipment. There seems no reason other than sheer display of aerobic conditioning to require wide receivers to line up on one side of a line an dash 50 yards downfield to get smashed into and killed by another guy dashing 50 yards as fast as he can trying to stop him. So change the rules so they don't run as fast as they can? Just let pass receivers stand around downfield, or let defensive backs line up there if they want. If you have to run 25 yards in three seconds to hit a guy catching a ball, someone is going to get killed. If you're lined up a foot away from the catcher, you don't need to kill him to get there in time. Sometimes the best improvement to equipment is to make it not used, in this manner. Another strange rule change is you have to try to kill the wide receiver because running yards made after a catch count, although trying to kill the receiver before the pass is pass interference with a free down, so an interesting compromise is no running yards after a pass along with any tackling of a receiver an automatic pass interference 1st down or half the distance to the goal. Where the receiver's feet are located when the pass is complete is where the play ends, not where the receiver was tackled after an attempt at a run. This would tend to make the game immensely more exciting because there will be even more aerobic running downfield and more exciting interceptions, vs a tendency to tempt the defensive line into an illegal tackle via short passes. Another strange rule is offensive and defensive lines symbolically fighting and pushing each other is acceptable, leading to a lot of physical damage. A rule as simple as you touch an opposing player you're both out of the play would be interesting to see. You don't have to hit a guy hard enough to kill him to get him out of the play, just merely touch him. Its easy to kill someone by trying to charge into them so hard you literally flip them over, but hard to kill someone by high-five-ing them as you pass by. I imagine you'd see some amazing dodgeball like madness as players try to remain untouched as late as possible in the play. |
Since we just made the whole game about passing without contact, 4 downs seems a bit too generous. Change possession whenever the offense fails to advance for whatever reason.
And 22 players on the field at once is just a bit much. So many variables. So cut that down to 7 players on each team.
And maybe to promote skillful passing, ditch that weird oblong ball and replace it with a flat plastic disk.