This year's Annual League Meeting will take place this Sunday, March 30 and run through Wednesday, April 2. As always, plenty will be up for discussion by way of proposed playing rules, bylaws and resolution proposals.
Here are the eight that will be covered and possibly voted upon by ownership next week:
Rule Proposal: Eliminate an automatic first down as a penalty imposed for defensive holding and illegal contact
Submitted by the Detroit Lions for competitive equity reasons, stating "current penalty enforcement is too punitive for the defense."
Rule Proposal: Prohibit an offensive player from pushing a teammate who was lined up directly behind the snapper and receives the snap, immediately at the snap
Submitted by the Green Bay Packers, this is essentially asking to ban what is more commonly known as the "Tush Push" – the short-yardage play the Philadelphia Eagles have excelled at and made prominent.
Rule Proposal: Align postseason and regular season overtime rules
Submitted by the Philadelphia Eagles, this would grant both teams an opportunity to possess the ball regardless of the outcome of the first possession, subject to a 15-minute overtime period in the regular season.
Bylaw Proposal: Reconfigured playoff seeding
Submitted by the Detroit Lions, the current seeding format would be changed to allow the wild card qualifiers to be seeded higher than division champions if the wild card team has a better season record.
Using last year's NFC playoff field as an example, here is how it would've looked under this proposal, according to NFL research:
- Lions
- Eagles (via winning Strength of Victory tiebreaker over MIN)
- Vikings
- Commanders
- Packers
- Buccaneers (via having better conference record than Rams)
- Rams
So, the Rams would've been the No. 7 seed and traveled to Philadelphia to face the Eagles rather than the No. 4 seed hosting the Vikings on Wild Card weekend. The Commanders would've faced the Packers in Green Bay rather than taking on the Eagles in Philadelphia. The caveat: the proposal would lessen the impact of winning a division.
The field last year looked like this:
- Lions
- Eagles
- Buccaneers
- Rams
- Vikings
- Commanders
- Packers
Bylaw Proposal: Exclude from the 90-man roster a player placed on Reserve/Injured before or on the day of the roster reduction to 53 players, unless such player is Designated for Return
This was submitted by the Lions in an effort to allow clubs to better manage their 90-man rosters late in the season in the event of an abnormally high number of players placed on Injured Reserve (IR). At one point last season, Detroit had 21 players on IR.
Resolution Proposal: Allow clubs during the two-day negotiation period to 1) have one video or phone call with a pending unrestricted free agent and his player agent; and 2) allows clubs to arrange for the player's travel upon agreeing to terms with a pending unrestricted free agent. Travel can't take place until the start of the new league year
Submitted by the Pittsburgh Steelers. Currently, teams are only allowed to speak with the agents of those players.
Resolution Proposal: Allow clubs to prepare kicking footballs before game day, similar to the process allowed for game ("quarterback") footballs
Submitted by the Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans, Las Vegas Raiders, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Commanders "to eliminate a burdensome and unnecessary process on game day." Since the 2020 season, teams have been able to prepare their kickoff balls (k-balls) on game day without the supervision of an NFL game day assistant (k-ball coordinator) during the 60-minute allotted time permitted under league rules. Team personnel have prepped the k-calls within their designated locker room space at the stadium.
Additionally, there have been technological and equipment advancements to provide a uniform process for doing so across k-balls and game balls.
Each team would still present three k-balls to the officiating crew before the game, which would still be inspected along with the quarterback balls.
Resolution Proposal: Allow clubs that may qualify for the playoffs to obtain scouting credentials for two consecutive games (Weeks 17 and 18) played by a potential postseason opponent. Also requires teams hosting Wild Card games to provide scouting credentials to all teams within the same conference who are participating in the postseason
Submitted by the Washington Commanders, this comes from the unpredictability of Week 18 given many teams who clinch playoff berths in Week 17 will rest their starters in the final week of the regular season. Washington in its proposal said the "current NFL policy unfairly provides clubs hosting Wild Card games the discretion to deny scouting credentials to certain potential opponents in later rounds of the postseason."
In essence, it would afford teams greater flexibility to scouting potential postseason opponents, since there are critical Week 17 games that decide the playoff fate of many teams.
