If you know anything about Grant Paulsen, you know three things: he loves him some Ben Johnson, he’s terrible at music trivia, and he absolutely HATES the “an offensive fumble forward through the end zone is a touchback and a turnover” rule in the NFL.
That one of course happened to the Chiefs on Sunday, and of course, Grant was all over it on Twitter, and all over it on Monday’s show, after Eric Bickel had wondered Monday morning with the Junkies why it was such a big deal and why people hate that that is a change of possession more than they do on a safety.
“To me, the safety, you're going backwards; it feels like the offense is failing, but when you are about to score, you're diving forwards, the offense often is thriving,” GP said. “These plays happen when you’re capping a long drive, so a lot of times it's a reversal of momentum with the offense on the precipice of points, as opposed to the opposite of that, which is you're 98 yards from points, at your own goal line, and you're going backwards on your heels. The defense is the aggressor.”
So now that we know why he hates it in-depth…heeeeeeeeeeeeere’s Danny!
“The answers you usually get when you correctly rail against that stupid rule are, ‘well, don't fumble,’ just idiotic, tough guy responses, but his comp is actually a really good one to me,” Danny replied. “If you want to even add part of the rule where, let's say for the sake of argument, the offense keeps the ball, but the defense gets two points out of it, I think it's more equitable than what they have. It's the disproportionate astounding response that's so punitive; it's different than anything else the sport has to offer, the way they treat a fumble that goes out of bounds in one key spot. I recognize the end zone is more important than, say, the 36, so treat it more seriously; back the offense up, give the defense the ball at the one-foot line, whatever you want to do. The combination of both things – possession, which you only get seven or eight meaningful ones per game, and then 20 yards, more significant than any penalty, non-pass interference division – is staggering.”
That’s when GP, who is about one more Ben Johnson Alert away from asking Ben to prom, threw out a Lions stat about expected completion percentage, which has nothing to do with THIS topic, but apparently Grant needed to wash the taste of sour fumble out of his mouth.
Now excuse us as we whitewash our ears from all the Ben Johnson Alert tones today…
