From the NY Times:
A Call for More Patience and for More Hustle
By JUDY BATTISTA
N.F.L. teams will receive a memo on Tuesday outlining the tweaks that the league hopes will smooth out the move of the umpire to the offensive backfield.
The move provoked harsh criticism last week from Peyton Manning, who said it seemed to him the league did not take into account how some offenses operate when it made the rule. The Colts, who run a no-huddle offense to great success, were penalized twice during last week’s preseason game for snapping the ball before the umpire was in position.
The bad news for Manning, and many coaches like the Giants’ Tom Coughlin who have been concerned about the impact on the hurry-up offense ever since the move was made in the spring, is that the umpire is staying on the offensive side of the ball, Carl Johnson, the N.F.L.’s vice president for officiating said Monday.
The competition committee moved the umpire, who used to stand in the middle of the defense, for his own safety after several umpires were injured last year.
The good news for hurry-up offenses is that the N.F.L. has made a few subtle changes, and more could be coming, perhaps in the form of a shift to the umpire’s position.
The umpire does not have to stand as deep as the competition committee — which includes Bill Polian, the Colts’ president, who voted in favor of the move — originally suggested. At the start of the preseason, the umpire was instructed to stand 14 to 17 yards behind the offense. After the Hall of Fame Game, he was told to stand 12 yards back so that the ball could be spotted more quickly after a play.
After the second week of games, the N.F.L. told its officials that the umpire did not have to be all the way back to his position before the ball could be legally snapped. He only had to be deeper than the deepest member of the offense. If the quarterback is in a shotgun, the umpire will have to be deeper.
The N.F.L. has also instructed quarterbacks to look at the officials near the sidelines to get the signal that it is O.K. to snap the ball rather than having to turn around to take a signal from the referee, which was originally suggested. The N.F.L. determined that looking to the sidelines was less disruptive for a quarterback who is already looking side to side while checking on his receivers and reading the defense, and that the deepest officials downfield were simply too far to deliver the signal.
During a Monday conference call, members of the competition committee discussed more changes to the umpire’s spot that could be made in time for the final preseason games this week. Mostly, Johnson pleaded for time to let everyone — officials and teams — adjust. Even Polian said last week that it typically takes two years to see the full impact of mechanical changes on the game.
“The intention was never to disrupt the tempo of a team or slow down any offense,” Johnson said.
Polian said that the Colts purposefully pushed the tempo of the game last week to see how the umpire’s position would affect the offense. But the illegal-snap penalty is rarely called, and that angered the Colts, particularly when the Colts were trying to snap the ball to prevent the Packers from throwing a replay-challenge flag.
“There are certain times in the game and certain downs and distances where it is going to become more of an issue, and they have to be aware of that and adjust to it,” Polian said.
In the meantime, all seven members of the officiating crew have been told to hustle, Johnson said, and spotting the ball has become more of a community assignment — with nearly every member of the crew having spotted the ball at some point in the preseason games. But there may be a more long-term change coming in the types of people the N.F.L. employs as umpires. Johnson said that umpires are going to have to be more athletic — slimmer and faster — because they will have to cover more ground than they used to.
