Leaping field goal/PAT blocks may soon be banned

Jim Davis/Boston Globe

The NFL Players Association is discussing the possibility of banning leaping field goal and extra point tries starting next season, so Shea McClellin is screwed.

Citing player safety concerns as the reason to ban this type of play, the association is confident the Competition Committee will side with them.

Patriots.com, citing the Washington Post:

“The jumping over on the field goal, I think, is just leading to a really dangerous play for everybody,” Eric Winston, offensive lineman and NFLPA president, said via the Post. “If you jump over the center, the jumper is in a really bad spot. He can land on his head. I think the guys that are getting jumped over are going to end up getting hurt, with those guys landing on them. So I’ll be very interested to see what they’ll do there. I think something probably needs to be done.”

“I think they’re probably on board with that,” Winston told the Post, going on to describe the potential injury threat of the play. “[It’s] just becoming a really, really dangerous play and now especially because everyone’s on the lookout for it, right? So someone’s ankles are going to get clipped. They’re going to go ass over teakettle, and either someone’s going to get landed on or he’s going to fall on his head. And they’re really bad injuries, too. It’s not like, ‘Oh, he could sprain his ankle.’ Those are neck injuries. Those are bad knee injuries. We expressed that to them, and I hope they follow through on that.”

As the rule stands right now, a player cannot line up directly over the long-snapper at the line of scrimmage and they can also not land on another player.

But really what this boils down to is someone got upset that the Patriots did something that is very rarely done and is within the rules, so now they want to ban it. It happened with the ineligible receiver formations in 2015 with the Ravens, and it happened when the Colts complained about the Patriots' defensive backs being too physical with them in the 2004 and 2005 playoffs.

So is anyone really surprised that this is probably going to happen?

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