[niss]

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My solution -- if they feel they need to protect the QB to such an extreme -- is to do what they did with roughing the kicker. Make a new 5-yd penalty for "running into the QB" or "unintentional contact with the QB", and keep the 15-yd personal foul for the worst cases.

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I like that a lot too. The only concern that I can see would be how you justify not making that 5 yds an automatic 1st down when "illegal contact" and defensive holding are.

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I wouldn't make it a first down, just like "running into the kicker" is not an automatic first down. On the one hand, QBs obviously are more valuable to the league than kickers; but on the other hand kickers generally are in a much more vulnerable position and susceptible to serious injury when kicking (and are not the dictionary of physical specimen) than QBs. The idea would be to penalize the team for unintentional, non-serious illegal contact with the QB, caused largely by 700 pound men throwing themselves at the QB at full speed who are not able to defy the laws of physics and stop themselves completely from contacting the QB, while not having that one play have such a disproportionate effect on the game.