1a. If you watched into the second half of Thursday Night Football, may God have mercy on your soul. But also, you likely heard the Buck-Aikman-Pereira triumvirate discuss that the NFL had handed down a mandate to crack down on offensive holding.
The kneejerk reaction is that this is the first anti-offense emphasis to come from Park Avenue in years. And it is. But while it’s a move designed to help the defense, it’s not necessarily going to curtail scoring in the long run. As I’ve discussed with podcast partner/K-pop idol Andy Benoit on our shows, and wrote about in the wake of the Rams-Chiefs Monday night classic, the league has re-shaped its rules to favor the aggressors—that’s mostly offense, but that’s also the pass rush.