Its not all the rules though

The game is faster and there is more passing now than there used to be.

That has nothing to do with rule changes.

And its not all Polian causing the rule changes. The tightening of the QB hit rules happened starting with Brady and his injury. God forbid he is lost for the year.

If that weren't true, they would have changed them after Carson Palmer was hurt in the playoffs in 2005. Much worse hit, same injury, just a different guy and team it happened to. But nope, had to wait 3 years until Brady suffers, then its a crisis

We had a 100 point game last night by a 2nd year and 3rd year QB, who don’t have his processing power. Mahomes had 5 td’s? How many games did Peyton sit out the fourth because we were blowing guys out? Did he even play the last game of the year? Brady did everything he could to beat that number, Manning did it without running up the score. If he had to keep scoring I think he could have easily hit 65. 5 more than that with the new rules is not unthinkable. Manning was getting hit a lot. His sack numbers don’t reflect it, but he was the most hit QB after release. If he had a cleaner pocket and more time, he would have been unstoppable. Hell he was unstoppable for a time.

All that is true but really last year is what clinched it. Several QBs went down and scoring went down. Consequently ratings went down also. The owners aren’t dumb, they know ratings are tied to scoring and you do that with big plays by superstar QBs. Ratings are up, scoring is up, Billionaires are happy. This current crop of QBs will set new records when they are done annhilating the old ones.

The game is faster and there is more passing because the rule changes made it easier to throw the ball.

Not exactly. Polian didn’t campaign for rule changes. No rules were changed. They just wanted the rules called as they stood. No rules were changed. To me that is very important to remember.

They changed rules after Palmer and Brady got hit low.

Correct. It's the Mel Blount Rule. It was put on the books in 1978.

Fair. The NFL made holding and illegal contact a point of emphasis, but those rules were already on the books.

Fyi manning was wearing a knee brace his first year. That plant leg is vulnerable to a guy accidently rolling into it

The guy who did the voices for Looney Tunes?! :p

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Colts fans have some really bad memories from the 2003 season AFC Championship game between the Colts and the Patriots.


This article was written just prior to the regular-season game that the 2 teams played against each other the following September (of the 2004 season.)




Hands Off for Patriots in Rematch With Colts

(By Judy Battista)

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/09/s...ith-colts.html


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