Defenses flopping, faking an injury to slow down offense (merged 8x)

[patchick]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

Make them pay on the field.

Heck yeah. How much is a win worth? What team wouldn't pay $500k for the right to neutralize a hurry-up offense that's eating them alive?

Charge them a time out and a 10 yd penalty. If they have no time outs, double the penalty.

I just can't go with any approach that requires the refs to decide who's faking. Don't want to turn a football contest into an acting contest. ("Unconvincing Conduct, defense. The player's grimace didn't reach his eyes. 10 yards, automatic first down.")

 

[ctpatsfan77]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

I just can't go with any approach that requires the refs to decide who's faking. Don't want to turn a football contest into an acting contest. ("Unconvincing Conduct, defense. The player's grimace didn't reach his eyes. 10 yards, automatic first down.")

Or, better yet, get the judges from Dancing with the Stars. Award a penalty if the routine doesn't score a certain number of points.

 

[Ochmed Jones]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

I think anytime a player is down, you have to treat it as a real injury.

I don't know or want to find out how the league would legislate the difference between a fake injury and a real injury.

If we open this avenue to to Goddell, then then any Jet players on the ground napping will never be penalized for a fake injury and if one of our players is down with a torn ACL, Goddell will punish us to the max for faking.

As long as Goddell is in office, you have to be careful what you wish for!!!!!!!!

 

[Wolfpack]

Re: OT:Flopping in Football, is there a fix?

But what is a questionable injury?

Well, 2 players standing up after a play is over and then both of them simultaneously flopping to the ground like they've just been shot by some sniper in the stands certainly counts as a "questionable" injury.

 

[Wolfpack]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

Oh, McGinest most certainly did. And a lot more blatant than anything the Chargers did yesterday.

McGinest went down and simultaneously Law started reaching for his leg. When Law saw that McG was down, Law miraculously "recovered" from his "injury" and straightened up. And then McG made the stuff, got to his feet, and ran full speed halfway down the field in celebration.

Absolutely a phony flop.

I don't remember the specifics of every play from a game played 8 years ago, but if McGinest went down on that drive where he made the goal line stop, the Patriots would have been charged a timeout since it was inside 2:00.

 

[PatsDeb]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

Well, I'm not sure how we can complain, as we were the beneficiaries of one of the greatest "flops" of all time, and that was the Willie McGinest gem, right before he stuffed Peyton Manning and Edgerrin James (?) on 4th & 1 at the buzzer to steal one for the Pats in 2003? 2004? It was one of the Superbowl years and it was magnificent. Seems like the Pats invented this tactic.

 

[PatsDeb]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

I don't remember the specifics of every play from a game played 8 years ago, but if McGinest went down on that drive where he made the goal line stop, the Patriots would have been charged a timeout since it was inside 2:00.

And therein lies the beauty of it. We were out of timeouts and we were on defense, so there was no 10 second runoff.

 

[WhoaDirty]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

In Canadian football, an injured player has to stay out of the gme for three plays before being allowed to come back into the game. But that doesn't stop the advantage the defence gets for being able to substitute to a new D, so the Defence should only be allowed to sub in players on a one-for-one injured player basis. The D would still get a rest, but I don't think you can make rules that assumes injuries are not legit, just enough to discourage fake injuries for benefit.

 

[FoxWhiskey]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

Look at MNF Rams vs. Giants:
Rams with no huddle and 2 giant players, at the same time, simulate injurys to slow down the offence.
And i think : we´ll see next year a lot of no huddle. Through all teams. And the NFL we´ll be forced to react.

 

[tunafish]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

And therein lies the beauty of it. We were out of timeouts and we were on defense, so there was no 10 second runoff.

Pretty sure the rule relating to mandatory injury timeouts and runoffs wasn't even around back in 04-- i believe it was implemented shortly after to prevent something like what happened in pats/colts from happening again

 

[patfanken]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

I think anytime a player is down, you have to treat it as a real injury.

I don't know or want to find out how the league would legislate the difference between a fake injury and a real injury.

If we open this avenue to to Goddell, then then any Jet players on the ground napping will never be penalized for a fake injury and if one of our players is down with a torn ACL, Goddell will punish us to the max for faking.

As long as Goddell is in office, you have to be careful what you wish for!!!!!!!!

OJ and PFT were right. You CANNOT ask an official to make a medical judgement on a player down on the field. There are only 2 ways to stop this. One is to do it after the fact with video (as PFT suggests) The other is through the change of substitution rules as several people here have opined.

I think the best procedural idea was that the "injured player" would have to stay out the remainder of the drive as a minimum. As to penalties for "flopping" after the fact. Stiff fines for BOTH the player and team. Repeat offenders will lose money AND draft picks

BTW- back in the day I worked out at the Quincy Gym that McGinest used in the off season. (he lived at the Quincy Marina with other Pats like Law and Milloy) We got to talking one day and I asked him about the "flop". He told me that he actually did hyperextend his leg on that play, but he then had to admit that he stayed down longer than he really had to because he knew the D was gassed. I think he missed 2 plays before he game back.

 

[tunafish]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

In Canadian football, an injured player has to stay out of the gme for three plays before being allowed to come back into the game. But that doesn't stop the advantage the defence gets for being able to substitute to a new D, so the Defence should only be allowed to sub in players on a one-for-one injured player basis. The D would still get a rest, but I don't think you can make rules that assumes injuries are not legit, just enough to discourage fake injuries for benefit.

Yeah, that's exactly how it should be done, with a 1 for 1 swap for the injured player (with another of the same position, ie DB for DB or LB for LB) with no other substitutions being allowed. However, if the offense makes new substitutions for the play following the player injury the defense should be allowed to match up (sub other players) so that the offense couldn't take advantage of the D's personnel after a legitimate injury. If the offense was truly in hurry-up mode then they wouldn't be making substitutions anyway, right??

 

[Ivan]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

That's actually a pretty clever way to address it, the player sits 3 plays and the defense can only sub for that 1 player.

 

[hyperpat]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

Goodell's cousin's barber's bookie told me this during a poker game last night: Notice that the NFL has "Futball Americano" signs up in stadiums to draw in Latin-American fans. The league wants to get Latins to switch over from devotion to soccer. One way the league has decided to make them feel at home after the switch is to institute "flopping" during games. Players wear electromagnets in their cleats. An NFL official has a special gun that he can aim at a player and energize the magnets. Down he goes in a flop. This system was supposed to be finished last spring, but was delayed by technical difficulties. The lock-out was cooked up by the league as a way to cover the delay.

 

[FreeTedWilliams]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

The Jets did this to the Pats last year, they flopped and flopped. The only real way to deter it is to change the rules and make the injuried player stay out for the next twenty snaps (maybe ten). That should put an end to it, without indangering players who are actually injuried. I have no problem instituting a rule that also states that if the injury time out necessitated a clock stoppage, than no other substitutions can be made by the team with the injuried player unless a) the other team makes substitutions or b) they take a time out.

 

[Snake Eyes]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

The Jets did this to the Pats last year, they flopped and flopped. The only real way to deter it is to change the rules and make the injuried player stay out for the next twenty snaps (maybe ten). That should put an end to it, without indangering players who are actually injuried. I have no problem instituting a rule that also states that if the injury time out necessitated a clock stoppage, than no other substitutions can be made by the team with the injuried player unless a) the other team makes substitutions or b) they take a time out.

I'd advocate the player having to stay out for 4-5 minutes of game clock time, this is essential for player safety, we don't want them going back in too soon at the risk of injuring themself, right?

 

[ctpatsfan77]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

I'd advocate the player having to stay out for 4-5 minutes of game clock time, this is essential for player safety, we don't want them going back in too soon at the risk of injuring themself, right?

On a serious note, doing this might actually harm players in the long run: if they know they're going to have to sit out for a "long time" if they don't get up, a player who might just need a play or two to catch their breath might stay in and risk serious injury.

I see that as a definite bug in such proposals.

Frankly, I say max ~5 plays/remainder of the possession, whichever comes first, and use tape to identify "floppers" and punish them.

 

[Snake Eyes]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

On a serious note, doing this might actually harm players in the long run: if they know they're going to have to sit out for a "long time" if they don't get up, a player who might just need a play or two to catch their breath might stay in and risk serious injury.

I see that as a definite bug in such proposals.

Frankly, I say max ~5 plays/remainder of the possession, whichever comes first, and use tape to identify "floppers" and punish them.

While that's possible it's also possible that they injure themselves more seriously by staying in after what appears to be a minor injury that they try to just play through.

I think it can cut either way but I'd much prefer an objective system than for the league to use the eye test after the player has already derived benefit from his flopping.

My way would demand better conditioning from defenses, incentivize offenses to be more multi-functional so they can better utilize the no-huddle exciting!) and make teams with a propensity to flop have to rethink their strategery because a flopping defender would need his offense to take more time on their subsequent drive in order to chew up enough time to get him back on the field.

Even a standard 2 minutes would be better than what we have now.

 

[Haley]

Re: No huddle offense...defensive flopping

Well, I'm not sure how we can complain, as we were the beneficiaries of one of the greatest "flops" of all time, and that was the Willie McGinest gem, right before he stuffed Peyton Manning and Edgerrin James (?) on 4th & 1 at the buzzer to steal one for the Pats in 2003? 2004? It was one of the Superbowl years and it was magnificent. Seems like the Pats invented this tactic.

The fact that we invented this just makes us smarter exploiters than the rest of the copycat exploiters. But no matter how you look at it, its still cheap. It is still a hole that needs to be plugged. No one should be able to do this. Willie wouldn't have been able to do this if the rules prohibited it. They would have had to find another way to survive.

I like the idea of keeping injured players out until a change of possession occurs. But if a team has good depth on defense, they could still pull this off. But it seems that if a player is shaken up enough to stop the clock, they probably should sit out for a bit anyway. The rule change may not entirely fix the problem but it seems to be a good common sense change anyway.

 

[Armchair Quarterback]

Re: OT:Flopping in Football, is there a fix?

The rest of the possession is the answer. They need to fix this, the game has enough stupid distractions without turning it into soccer.

Against Miami, Marshall was limping off the field and you can see Sunglasses at Night Fist Pump and another coach motioning him to get down and he went down like he was shot. That wasn't as bad as what the Giants did with two flopping at the same time.

Obviously it wasn't Marshall, Sean Smith I think. The only issue I see with the rest of possession would be you'd better hope that your QB doesn't get dinged up late in the game because the rule would apply to both sides. Imagine Brady having to sit out a possession at crunch time but that would be the price you pay. It would be worth it to get rid of flopping.

Yes, McGinest did it and no we didn't invent it. McGinest did it once (at an opportune time), the Pats weren't doing it every other play.