- This new roughing passer rule in the NFL
- Is awful.
- Is bad, right?
- Yeah like it's literally one of the worst rules
I have ever seen depicted in major sports,
or minor sports.
- Would you agree that back in the day,
it was way worse though?
- Ryan, back in the day NFL linemen, defenders, whatever
they had to trudge uphill both ways in the snow
to the stadium, rather it was August or December,
the snow was there.
- The snow was always there.
- Yeah, its always there.
- Sure, things I think were worse back in the day.
- It would hazard to guess.
- Yes, there was one particular rule, are you familiar
at all with the Ben Davidson rule?
- I am not.
- Okay, this rule basically changed how defensive players
were aloud to target dudes who are already down on the field
to protect them from basically getting murdered if they
decided to go down to end a play or whatever.
- So you're talking about, like, you're on the ground
play, it's like, clearly over, whistle has blown,
and I come in like a heat seeking missile
and just take some dude out that's already on the ground?
- Exactly
- Okay
- Exactly, it was legal to do that until 1976.
- For what reason, like I understand, you gotta assert
your toughness by not touching the guy down with
like two hands or something like that?
- I guess I don't know, but the whole reason that rule
came to play was because the Raiders and the Kansas City
Chiefs had that crazy rivalry.
Its November 1st, 1970, the Raiders are at Kansas City,
so quarterback Len Dawson, for the Chiefs, is like
well, we are on third down, we've got less than two minutes,
we're up by three, I'm gonna just run for the first down
and then the game is iced and I'll just run out the clock
and we'll be good to go.
- Yeah
- So he does what every modern quarterback does after he
gets the first down, he takes a dive and he goes down,
and we can all go home and hit the shower.
- Yeah, lets all go in the locker room and smoke cigarettes
- Exactly what they did, you know, get on a plane
and destroy it or whatever they did in the 70's.
Raiders defensive end Ben Davidson, whose a big boy,
he comes up behind Len Dawson, who is already on the ground,
and just with the crown of his helmet, right in the small
of his back, BOOM, full speed.
- I can just like hear, like, I could just see the like,
NFL films, like, da-dun-da.
- It's really funny that you mention that cause we actually
have the NFL films clip of this game, do you want to see it?
- Absolutely.
- Okay.
- Here watch this again.
- Yeah, okay, so I played really really bad
high school football, and like, the one thing they tell you,
literally, the first day of football
is not to use your helmet as a weapon.
- Sure
- Like that's literally what he did.
- And that's precisely what we just watched.
- That's incredible.
- It's crazy. All hell breaks loose and they have this
huge bench clearing brawl, there are personal foul penalties
on both sides.
- I'm surprised they even had personal fouls in the 60's,
but, impressive, big ups.
- Right, the penalties offset so the Chiefs have to replay
the third down, they lose the first down, on the next
third down they do not make the conversion, they have to
punt on the fourth down and then the raiders go on to tie
and eventually win the football game,
because of our man, Ben Davidson going right
into the back with the helmet.
- Eh, well, look its 50 years later
and now the Raiders are going to Las Vegas,
so who really won in the end, right?
- So six entire years later, of course,
because that's the NFL speed,
the standard speed for actually making a rule,
they enacted what later became the Ben Davidson Rule
which is basically, I'll read it to you,
the actual verbiage is rule 12 section 2 article 6g
No unnecessarily running, diving into, cutting, or throwing
the body against or on player who one is out of the play
or two should not have reasonably anticipated such contact
by an opponent, before or after the ball is dead.
And I think you can reasonably assume that if you are the
quarterback and you have gone down and you are making no
forward progress, you're done.
- Hey Len, head on a swivel buddy.
- And with the back exposed? You can't have a big boy
defensive and ignore that?
- You invited that.
- Yeah, dude he was asking for it.
- So you said it took six years, right?
So I imagine like the yearly spring meetings,
and so it's like five and a half years later
and some guy was like, "Hey, remember that thing in the
Raiders Chiefs game like six years ago?
Wow, that was messed up, do you wanna like figure that out?"
- Ya, remember that, Dawson was almost paralyzed?
- Literally almost died on the football field
cause he slid or whatever, like maybe we go back
and revisit that, ahh?
- Yeah, or maybe just every season it was like,
ah I don't know, ratings are up.
- Now's not the time.
- People really like the blood sport aspect.
- Come on read the room Tom, like, now's not the time.
- Yeah exactly.
Yeah man, it's tough for a guy out there these days.
This seems like a lot more, makes a lot more sense.
The new rule seems like it makes less sense.
- It's kind of like the NFL knows it like has to change,
the NFL knows it has to adapt, like it has to change.
Like, ostensibly, yeah all right players safety whatever,
but like are you really doing it the right way,
or are you just kind of like throwing darts at the board
and hoping that it works out?
- Right, do you think the NFL will
ever be able to figure this out?
- I don't know know Ryan, think about it.
You're trying to inject perfection in an imperfect game
and an imperfect system with imperfect humans.
At the end maybe the fault is within ourselves,
that the NFL can't get this right.
- Sure, or maybe we'll just wait six years
and they'll figure it out.
- Yeah.