The 2016 season is unfortunately over, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are now embarking upon their latest offseason journey, heading back to the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex, formerly known and still referred to as the ‘South Side’ facility of Heinz Field. While the postseason is now behind us, there is plenty left to discuss.
And there are plenty of questions left unanswered as well. The offseason is just really the beginning phase of the answer-seeking process, which is lasts all the way through the Super Bowl for teams fortunate enough to reach that far.
You can rest assured that we have the questions, and we will be monitoring the developments in the offseason as they develop, and beyond, looking for the answers as we look to evaluate the makeup of the Steelers as they try to navigate their way back to the Super Bowl, after reaching the AFC Championship game last season for the first time in more than half a decade.
Question: If there were one rule on the books that you would like to see the league tweak, what would it be?
We have over the course of the past week or so generated a good deal of discussion on the topic of rules and regulations and things of that nature, no doubt a likely extension of the fact that the league just held their first session of annual owners’ meetings out in Arizona last week.
I even posed the question to you yesterday what you would think about the league’s intention of tweaking the overtime rule that would reduce the overtime period in the preseason and regular season to a maximum of 10 minutes.
So that question got me to thinking: whenever the topic comes up, there are a series of comments about the fact that the league just seems to like tinkering with things for the sake of doing so—a sentiment I’m definitely not wholly unsympathetic to, let me assure you.
In light of that, if the league is going to tweak things anyway, what is one rule adjustment that you would like to see happen?
I can imagine a lot of commenters would be in favor of easing back many of the changes that have been implemented in the past five years to the rules protecting defenseless players, and incidental contact against quarterbacks, things of that nature.
One thing that I think might be interesting to see would be a scaling back of the rules prohibiting defensive players from contacting a wide receiver beyond the line of scrimmage, which would inevitably have a negative impact on the scoreboards, but would free up defensive backs to cover. I think we can all agree that there are too many pass interference calls.
One change I’ve been glad to see over the past couple of years has been the slow removal of the chop block from the game. While it was formerly a staple feature of certain rushing systems, it’s frankly a dangerous play, and I know several current and former Steelers who don’t miss it.
