ORLANDO, Fla. — It was an existing rule and not the minor changes approved by the owners Wednesday that brought the fiercest reaction from NFL officials.
The league closed out its annual spring meeting with the heads of its competition committee pledging to use the current unsportsmanlike conduct penalty to crack down on what they claim is an epidemic of taunting and trash-talking.
“We agreed that we have an issue on the field and we agreed that we are going get it under control as soon as we can possibly can,” said Rams coach Jeff Fisher, one of the competition committee leaders. “We’ve got to change our conduct on the field. We’ve got to bring the element of respect to its highest level back to our game.”
Fisher said taunting penalties mushroomed league-wide to 34 last season after totaling just nine in 2011 and 12 in 2012.
The problem is so acute, according to Fisher, the NCAA asked the NFL to work on curtailing it because so many college players were emulating their pro counterparts.
The crackdown will include the use of the N-word, which means a 15-yard penalty if officials can clearly identify who used it.
“We’re going to clean the game up on the field between the players,” Fisher said. “The in-your-face taunting, the language — it’s all in the [rule] book,” Fisher said. “It’s all under unsportsmanlike conduct. There’s no change in our rule. We’re going to enforce the current rule.
The owners voted down Patriots coach Bill Belichick’s proposal to move the extra point to the 25-yard line from the 2-yard line, but the league is intrigued by the suggestion — so intrigued the NFL will experiment with PATs from the 20-yard line (a 37-yard attempt) during the first two weeks of the preseason.
“We all feel like we need to do something [to make extra points more difficult], but we’re just not quite sure what we are going to do with it yet,” Fisher said. “The [competition] committee, historically, has been very careful in recommending significant changes like what New England proposed. So I think it’s a positive thing as far as the [experiment] is concerned.”
The owners did not vote on expanding the playoffs by one team per conference at these meetings, but commissioner Roger Goodell said there is much support for it and wouldn’t rule out implementing the bigger postseason field as soon as the 2014 season. … Theyowners passed three minor rules changes, extending the height of the goalposts by five feet, allowing the recovery of a loose ball to be reviewed by replay and enabling the clock to run after a sack outside of the final two minutes.