Right, I'm glad we're still debating "immediate" and stances... which skips over the point I was asking about, as people had been debating "immediate" and stances and glossing over this detail.
Under the new rule (and the old rule as well), a legal block below the waist may (still) occur in the FBZ by a defensive player as long as all the other conditions are met, correct?
Yes. Just basically has to be his first move.
So the way I'm reading the new language (there is no mention of either offense or defense) that IMHO means that only linemen can BBW and the first action at the snap must be to initiate the BBW. That, again IMHO, will mean a lineman on either side of the ball may a BBW only the opposing lineman that is directly in front of him or in a gap formation the lineman just to his right or left?
Probably... that sounds reasonable.
The whole issue before with the "immediate" definition, the stances, etc was that people were trying to answer the question "What move can be performed in the interval of time that the ball is in the free blocking zone when in shotgun?"
Now, we are eliminating that question. We don't care where the ball is, so we don't have a time restriction. So we're going to make a new definition of "immediate" to mean the first move by a lineman out of his stance. How liberal that's going to be will yet to be seen.
If I were king, interpreting the new rule, I would allow linemen to cut on their first step. As long as they made contact before/simultaneous to their second step hitting the ground, I'd say legal cut. Almost like travelling in basketball with the steps. If you take 2 steps, it's not immediate and it would be a foul. Like NVFOA_Ump said, you'd probably only be able to execute this against someone in your gap or head up on the adjacent lineman, depending on how wide splits are. That's why I wouldn't use gap alignment as a barometer, because some spread teams like to have very wide splits and some Wing-T teams like to have foot-to-foot splits. If offenses are foot-to-foot, you could certainly cut someone immediately that's heads up on the adjacent lineman from you. And if they're wide splits like a spread offense, you might not be able to!