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What if there was a cap on number of passes per game?

BattleshipTexas

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Oct 15, 2001
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Okay, today's game is very fun to watch. Graceful WRs, 3 or 4 playing at a time and making acrobatic catches. Passing dominated game. But watching the Ed Simmons thread, back in 1983, Texas threw 10 passes in the game. OU threw a few more, but most were late in the game, down by a couple of TDs.

That brand of 1983 football was fun too. Bo Jackson with Auburn wound up No. 3 in the AP (15 passes per game). Nebraska with Turner Gill at QB averaged 50 points a game, but only passed 16 times a game on average. The player's bodies were different. Just as athletic, but more emphasis on different traits. Texas averaged 15.6 passes per game in 1983. Brent Duhon and Bill Boy Bryant caught 13 and 12 passes to lead the receivers. That is 13 and 12 total for the season, not per game.

Realistically, it is just two different games. Neither inherently better or worse. depends on what you like to watch. If you like today's game that is fine. But it is fun to speculate how the game would change if there was a rule you could only throw 12 times in a game. Suddenly we wouldn't be playing 5 DBs at a time. LBs were grow back to LB size, not just big DBs.

Some players like Ja'Tavion Sanders would still be sought after but probably as a DE. Guys like Worthy might still play, highly valued as a punt returner, which there would be more of, but he wouldn't play but sporadically on offense. Some of the rules to shorten games wouldn't be needed, as there are so many fewer clock stoppages from incomplete passes. So that might have to change, maybe not run the clock on out-of-bounds plays.

Obviously this will never happen, but I would like your thoughts on how a 12 pass a game maximum would change things. What players would lose out on playing time. What players not in demand would return to be needed.
 
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