First, let me say, I'm all for a little gamesmanship. I wink in admiration at those baseball folks who can steal another team's signs. I'm all for "foul the freshman." Not opposed to firing a puck at a goalie's noggin to get him thinking. I like the "purpose pitch" in baseball.
But the NFL must, MUST, do away with this nonsense of allowing coaches to call time outs -- at least during field goal tries.
The Buffalo Bills' Dick Jauron was the latest to try this bush league move, which is to call time out JUST before the ball is snapped. He did it Monday night as the visiting Dallas Cowboys were getting ready to try a game-winning, 53-yard kick with but one second remaining. The ESPN cameras were showing us the end zone angle as the Cowboys kicker went into his motion and smacked the pigskin with the side of his foot, in that soccer-style that is now taken over the kicking game. The kick was long enough and straight enough. Cowboys win!
Nope -- wait a minute!
Apparently, Jauron called time out on the sidelines in the fraction of a second before the ball was snapped. I was wondering why the officials beneath the goal posts hadn't signaled the kick was good, when it clearly was.
So the young kicker Folk had to do it all over again -- which was exactly the motive for Jauron's eleventh-hour time out. His second kick was as true as the first -- practically an instant replay. Cowboys win! For real, this time.
The ironic thing about this mess is that kickers have said, on more than one occasion, that the whole notion of "icing" them with a time out to make them "think about" the kick does them more good than harm. They would rather, they've remarked, take their time and get everything right. Kickers are a very deliberate, routine-oriented lot. Better that, they say, than to rush onto the field and make a kick, helter skelter. So the "icing" might really mean that the other team has injected that stuff into the kicker's veins, after all. Tables turned.
But that's not the point here. To allow a coach to call a time out like that is opening the league and its officials up to a kind of dispute that can't really be solved with the security blanket of instant replay.
What if the official that Jauron was barking to didn't hear him in time? Or what if his reaction time was just slow enough that the second between Jauron's time out and the official's acknowledgement didn't happen fast enough, and the kick was on its way? Or how about this: what if the kicking team missed, and THEY insisted that the other team's coach called time out? If I was a special teams coach, I'd have someone bird-dogging the other team's coach, for just such a gamesmanship ploy myself. Maybe I could get myself another kick that way, if needed.
On the ESPN replay (and the network wisely had a hand-held camera trained on Jauron), you can see Jauron looking at the field, an official to his right. Then he yells, "GO! GO! NOW! GO!" several times, to the zebra. Finally he's granted the time out. Now, how Jauron knows when the ball is going to be snapped, I have no idea. You can't just go by the play clock, because teams don't always use all of it during a field goal try. So maybe it's just intuition. Regardless, it's a dumb rule and should be abolished. Heaven forbid something similar happen in a Super Bowl.
The fix is easy: only allow players on the field to call time out. Now, if an enterprising player manages to sneak one in before a kick, more power to him. Or, better yet, forbid time outs on kicking plays once the players are set. An attempt to call one after this deadline is met with a five-yard penalty, making the kick easier.
The league is sitting on a powder keg the way it is now.
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