I would get rid of the qb out of the pocket gets to just launch the ball out of bounds. Your defense kills itself to cover, and pressure the qb, and they get a free pass.
Agreed. Ridiculous rule. That rule didn't exist when I started following football. To avoid intentional grounding it had to reach the vicinity of an eligible receiver.
In contrast to what someone else posted, I think offensive holding should return to a 15 yard penalty. That's what it was decades ago. It's also the reason many of the old time quarterbacks had huge yards per completion but also high interceptions rates. They had to force matters for the first down. These days with so many other rules catering to offense and very low interception rate, it would be a great partial equalizer to restore to 15 yard penalty and make the offenses earn it. Holding is not called as frequently anyway.
At least one foot should be behind the line of scrimmage to avoid illegal forward pass. Why is that so complicated? It's no different than keeping feet in bounds. Granted the situation doesn't come up often but it's preposterous to allow everything beyond the line as long as an extended back leg is at or behind.
As another poster mentioned, illegal contact should be extended to 10 yards not 5. Or make it a compromise like 7. Would that be too much for a referee to keep track of? Why does everything have to be a multiple of 5? NBA has no trouble with a 24 second clock, which has been around quite a bit longer than I've been alive.
The biggest change of all needs to be simply spotting the ball correctly. Every year NFL and college teams are granted thousands of yards combined that they didn't earn. It is disgusting to stop the tape and watch the ball consistently spotted a foot or more beyond the actual end point. That's why almost every replay review of that type involved moving the ball backward, not forward.
This may go against player safety but I think it's time to drop the 40 second clock down to 35. That would add considerably more plays, and these days huddles aren't used anyway so there's no issue in being ready on time. When I began following football there was no such thing as a 40 second clock. The play clock was 30 seconds after the ball was spotted. But that became problematic because some referees were slow to spot the ball while others were fast. Obviously sometimes the ball got kicked away or otherwise delayed, which added to the inconsistent nature. That's why they went to a blanket 40. Changing to a 35 second clock would make the end of games more interesting because -- for example -- you could not simply kneel 3 times at the 2 minute warning if the opponent is out of time outs.