Xfl Differences
America’s favorite game is evolving, and that means less stall and more ball. When the XFL Opening Weekend kicks off on Feb. 8, our new league will feature exciting gameplay innovations that deliver what football fans have told us they want - a faster pace of play and more action. Perhaps the biggest difference between the two different XFLs is shown in the leagues’ broadcast presentations. The 2001 XFL saw Vince McMahon walk out to midfield, microphone in hand, to growl, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the XFL,” as if still in his Monday Night RAW persona. The XFL is hoping to snatch viewers away from the NFL by ushering in rules that are drastically different than the ones most football fans have come to know. On Tuesday, the official XFL rule. The new XFL is going to have several major and surprising differences from the first iteration. The second iteration of the XFL will be much different than.
The 2020 XFL season will begin this weekend, and if you’re planning on tuning in to get your football fix during the NFL offseason, you may be a little confused by the league’s new rules. The XFL has made several major rule changes in an attempt to reduce overall game times and produce more highlight-reel plays.
Here’s a primer on all the major rule changes and differences from standard NFL rules.
SCORING RULES:
Point-after touchdown plays
In the XFL, there are no kicked extra points after touchdowns. Instead, teams will have an option to run a play to score either 1, 2 or 3 extra points, creating the possibility for a 9-point touchdown.A 1-point try will be run from the 2-yard line. A 2-point try will start at the 5-yard line, and a 3-point try will start at the 10-yard line.GAME RULES:
Double-forward passes
Unlike in the NFL, the XFL will allow two forward passes on a play, provided that the first forward pass is caught behind the line of scrimmage.
What is a catch?
In the XFL, receivers only need to have one foot – or any other part of their body – contact the ground in bounds, instead of two feet in the NFL. Here is how the league defines what a catch is:
Secures control of a live ball in flight before the ball touches the ground.Touches the ground in bounds with any part of his body, and thenMaintains control of the ball long enough to enable him to perform an act common to the game, i.e., long enough to pitch or hand the ball, advance it, avoid or ward off an opponent, etc.Kickoffs
The XFL designed its kicking rules in a way to increase the amount of returns we see compared to the NFL, and to make returns safer. Kickoffs are going to look very different.
On a kickoff, the kicker will kick the ball from their own 30-yard line, but every blocker will be lined up on the opposing team’s 35-yard line. The return team blockers will be lined up at their own 30, just five yards away.
Only the kicker and receiver can move before the ball is caught. All other blockers are permitted to move when the ball is caught, or three seconds after it hits the ground, if the ball isn’t caught.
Kicks that fly out of bounds, or kicks that fall short of the opposing 20-yard line, will result in the receiving team taking the ball at the kicking team’s 45-yard line.
Touchbacks will result in the receiving team starting at their own 35-yard line.
Teams will be required to inform an official if they plan to use an onside kick, meaning they cannot surprise the opposing team with an onside kick.
Punts
Punting rules have also been changed to entice coaches to go for it on fourth down.
All punts that result in touchbacks will be placed on the receiving team’s 35-yard line. Punts that go out of bounds will also be placed on the receiving team’s 35-yard line, or wherever the ball went out if that occurred before reaching the 35.
The punting team may not cross the line of scrimmage before the ball is punted, which should reduce the amount of fair catches significantly.
Challenges
There are no coaches challenges in the XFL. All reviews will be initiated by a replay official. Via the XFL, here is a list of reviewable plays:
(a) Plays involving possession. (b) Plays involving touching of either the ball or the ground. (c) Plays governed by the goal line. (d) Plays governed by the boundary lines. (e) Plays governed by the line of scrimmage. (f) Plays governed by the line to gain. (g) Number of players on the field at the snap. (h) Game administration. (1) Penalty enforcement. (2) Proper down. (3) Spot of a foul. (4) Status of the game clock. (i) Disqualification of a player. This list of reviewable plays is identical to those in the NFL prior to 2019.
OVERTIME FORMAT:
The XFL has devised a completely new format for overtime, which is comparable to a shootout in soccer.
In overtime, each team’s offense will have five attempts to complete a two-point conversion from the five-yard line, with each successful conversion being worth two points. The team with the most points at the end of the shootout is the winner. If one team clinches a win early, the unnecessary remaining rounds of the shootout will not be played.
There will be no coin toss to determine the order of overtime. The visiting team will always make the first two-point attempt.
Defenses cannot score in overtime possessions in the event of a turnover.
Penalties in overtime:
Penalties will be crucial in overtime plays. If the offensive team commits a pre-snap penalty, the ball will moved back and the play will be re-attempted. If the offense commits a post-snap penalty, the play is considered dead, and any score will not count.
If the defense commits a penalty pre-snap, the ball will be moved to the one-yard line. For a post-snap penalty, the offensive team will have the option to re-try the play from the one-yard line if they do not score. Any future penalties committed by the defense in any future round will result in an automatic score for the offense.
TIMING RULES:
Game clock:
The XFL will use a running clock outside of the final two minutes of the second quarter, and the final two minutes of the fourth quarter.
The final two minutes of the second and fourth quarters is what the XFL refers to as the “comeback period.” During these periods, plays that end out of bounds or with an incompletion will stop the clock until the next snap. The clock will be stopped after all other plays that end in bounds until the ball is spotted and five seconds have run off the play clock. In theory, this should give an offensive team leeway to run plays in the center of the field, as they will be able to rush back to the line of scrimmage without time coming off the clock.
The play clock is 25 seconds, and will begin when the ball is spotted following the previous play.
There will be one official on the field dedicated to spotting the ball, in an effort to speed up the process compared to the NFL.
Timeouts:
Each XFL team will receive two timeouts per half, compared to three per half for NFL teams.
The halftime break will be 10 minutes.
Penalties:
The XFL’s “illegal man downfield” rule has been rewritten to make it easier for officials to enforce.
No ineligible player shall be or have been more than three yards beyond the line of scrimmage until a passer throws a legal forward pass that crosses the line of scrimmage. A player is in violation of this rule if any part of his body is beyond the three-yard limit.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. World Wrestling Entertainment chairman Vince McMahon obviously believes in this mantra, as he created the 2.0 version of his infamous football league, the XFL, to start the weekend after Super Bowl LIV in February 2020.
And yeah, like we said, this is the XFL sequel, as the original version got started all the way back in 2001. Honestly, Vince McMahon getting into the football business two decades ago makes perfect sense ... on paper. After all, the most popular sports competitions in the United States are the NFL and college football. However, just because something sounds good, that doesn't mean it's actually going to pan out.
Sports aficionados who were around at the turn of the century witnessed McMahon's move play out, and needless to say, the original XFL didn't last long. And that's what makes the return of the organization a little baffling. While the league's owner and diehard fans might have big hopes, chances are good the XFL 2.0 is going to crash and burn like its predecessor. Want some proof? Well, grab your helmet and brace yourself for some brutal truths as we look at why this new XFL is going to fail.
The original XFL failed despite being a TV hit
The very first XFL game kicked off in February 2001 between the Las Vegas Outlaws and New York-New Jersey Hitmen. Regardless of what any football purists or critics had to say about the action on the field or the league's rules, that contest was a massive hit in the ratings. As explained by ABC News, 9.5 percent of 102.2 million households in the United States at the time tuned in to watch the game. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 14 million viewers watched that initial primetime contest.
Per MediaPost, that number is close to the average of viewers the 2019 NBA Finals drew for a six-game series between the Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors. Of course, viewing habits have changed drastically from January 2001 to today. After all, streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and others didn't exist at the start of the century. So needless to say, the new XFL probably won't come anywhere close to that high of a rating, even for a championship game.
It's also important to point out that, as noted by Sports Media Watch, ratings for the 2001 XFL games fell off a cliff after Week 1, and McMahon abandoned the league after just one season. Per the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the first four match-ups of the 2020 XFL averaged slightly over 3 million viewers. So even though the XFL 1.0 started off strong, it didn't make it very far. And if that one couldn't last — in an era where way more people were tuning in to watch actual TV — then how will the XFL fare any better today?
Every other potential NFL competitor has failed
McMahon's original vision for the XFL was neither the first nor last alleged NFL competitor to miserably fail in less time than it takes for a college student to earn a four-year degree. For example, as described by the Tampa Bay Times, the World Football League convinced well-known Miami Dolphins players Larry Csonka, Paul Warfield, and Jim Kiick to defect from the NFL in 1974. However, that competition ceased operations before the completion of its second season.
In the 1980s, businessman and future United States president Donald Trump threw his financial backing behind the United States Football League when he became the owner of the New Jersey Generals. The USFL featured stars such as Herschel Walker, Steve Young, Reggie White, and Jim Kelly. That league finished three seasons from 1983 through 1985 before it folded.
As mentioned by Fox Business, multiple varieties of Arena League Football arose and fell during the 2000s. Those running the United Football League gave it a go from 2009 through 2012 before admitting defeat. In February 2019, the Alliance of American Football averaged over 3 million viewers for its debut weekend, per the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. But two months later, the league suspended all football operations and never returned in any format. In other words, if all these organizations have failed, the odds aren't good for the newest iteration of XFL.
Fans won't invest in football during NFL off-seasons
In 2013, New York sports talk radio legend Mike Francesa opined that football could eventually suffer from oversaturating the market with a plethora of prime time games. While Francesa was ranting about the NFL during that segment, his theory has held true for every other league from the 1970s all the way to the modern era of the game.
See, an idea regarding the creation of the XFL is that NFL fans are left desperately longing for football as soon as a season's Super Bowl concludes. 'The day people stop trying to create spring football leagues will be the day the NFL is no longer popular,' Alliance of American Football head of business Tom Veit told Sports Business Journal for a piece published in the summer of 2019.
But as noted by SBJ and Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, no tangible evidence exists to support the notion Americans crave football from the middle of February through the end of July. NFL fans are creatures of habit. They dedicate 16 or 17 Sundays every year from September through the end of December, plus the first weekend of January, to watching the league, and they also reserve Super Bowl Sunday for football. But fans have never invested that kind of time or money into an NFL competitor since before the AFL-NFL merger. In other words, it's wishful thinking to believe the XFL will reach that level of popularity.
College football is already a popular alternative
American football fans aren't exactly hurting for content. Outside of the NFL, college football is a clear No. 2 in the market. It's existed for generations, and it's forged bonds between university alumni and those who never attended college but attached themselves to football programs. And trust us, there are a lot of people attached. In December 2019, CBS Sports reported the SEC on CBS was a television ratings juggernaut for an eleventh consecutive season. According to 247Sports, eight college football programs averaged over 92,000 fans for home games that same season. No NFL club hit that mark the same fall, per ESPN.
And don't forget about the rise of televised midweek Mid-American Conference games. Once November begins, live football contests air on cable and national television every night of the week — NFL match-ups on Mondays, Thursdays, and Sundays, and college games on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays — until the end of the college campaign. So yeah, there's a whole lot of athletes out there tackling one another.
XFL apologists may immediately retort that league games occur during the spring, thus offering something different than college football. While that's true, all should remember sports programming is no different than any form of episodic television. Everything, outside of soap operas, has an off-season for good reason.
The XFL is doomed to always lack star power
Stars sell sports leagues and products. One doesn't need to be a UFC or mixed martial arts insider to understand Conor McGregor delivers the promotion more PPV buys than Jessica Eye. Men such as Antonio Brown, Tom Brady, Odell Beckham Jr., Michael Vick, and Rob Gronkowski graced covers of Madden video games to generate buzz for those titles and boost sales.
No disrespect meant, but the XFL began its rebirth without a single star or household name playing in the league. Ohio State graduates and students remember quarterback Cardale Jones, but the national champion flopped in the NFL. Penn State product Matt McGloin enjoyed a cup of coffee with the Oakland Raiders, but that brief stint won't result in him selling thousands of jerseys and tickets to local XFL supporters.
In February 2020, XFL commissioner Oliver Luck told NPR's Michel Martin that former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick wasn't in the league because he had salary requirements that were 'exorbitant and certainly out of our range.' That same month, former college football sensation and Cleveland Browns signal-caller Johnny Manziel seemed to mock the XFL via Twitter. Simple math suggests quarterbacks such as Brady, Eli Manning, and Philip Rivers — who made over $200 million off NFL contracts alone — won't drop salary requests to match the XFL price range. In other words, there simply aren't any stars in the XFL, and the league can't afford to poach any of the big players.
The XFL will face stiff competition from other sports
The XFL won't directly compete with the NFL and college football for viewers and attention over the first half of its first season. Truth be told, February is probably the most boring sports month of every year following the Super Bowl. No other major sports title is won or lost in February, and while MLB players report for spring training workouts, that never alters the sports-television landscape.
Things become more complicated for the XFL come March, though. That month, the league will clash with marquee events such as Championship Week for men's and women's NCAA basketball, Selection Sunday for the men's NCAA Tournament, and the opening weekends of both the men's and women's roundball tournaments. Later in March, MLB and Major League Soccer start their regular seasons. Plus, both NBA and NHL teams begin pushing towards postseason play around St. Patrick's Day.
Xfl Ball Differences
April won't be any kinder to the XFL. The men's and women's Final Four have become April events. Near the halfway mark of the month, the Stanley Cup Playoffs and NBA Playoffs will get underway. Games occur practically every day, including on XFL Saturdays and Sundays, in the opening rounds of those tournaments. Will viewers the XFL gains in February account for those who retreat to other sports in March and April?
Will XFL be able to maintain attendance figures?
Before the start of the 2020 XFL season, the league placed franchises in Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, St. Louis, New York, Seattle, Tampa Bay, and Washington DC. However, the NFL has teams in seven of those eight markets. On top of that, the New York Giants and New York Jets share MetLife Stadium, while Los Angeles is home to both the Chargers and Rams. Can the XFL find a way to get potential customers in those markets (who already have NFL season tickets) to attend up to five home XFL contests per season?
As for Seattle football fans, well, they have a reputation for being more loyal than most. They're not known as the '12th Man' for nothing. Sports supporters in and around the area are also passionate about following the Seattle Sounders. Per Soccer Stadium Digest, the Sounders averaged over 40,000 fans for home MLS games in both 2018 and 2019. In March and April, some of those consumers will have to choose between the Sounders, a team that officially debuted in the North American top-flight soccer league in 2009, and the Seattle Dragons of the XFL. If we had to bet on who they were going to pick, well, things aren't looking good for the Dragons.
Xfl Differences
Plus, weather will affect games in certain cities. Will snow or below-freezing temperatures deter fans from trekking to venues in New York or D.C.? Seriously, a little bit of bad weather, and things could get really bad for the XFL.
Fans may not learn confusing XFL rules
For the most part, college football and NFL games are played under the same rules, but of course, there are a few differences. In college, the game clock stops on every first down until the ball is set for the next snap. That doesn't occur in the NFL. College receivers only need to have one foot down in the field of play to complete a catch, while NFL players must secure a thrown football while both feet are in bounds. With that said, both competitions are brands of football most fans grew up watching either in-person or via television, so they've all picked up on the differences by now.
However, in February 2020, USA Today shared a full list of rule differences that separate the XFL from the NFL. To be blunt, there's a lot to digest. Players lineup differently for XFL kickoffs than what occurs during high school, college, and NFL games. Surprise onside kicks and kicked extra points don't exist in the XFL. The XFL has 'comeback periods' in the final two minutes of the second and fourth quarters of games that involve clock stoppages after each play.
So what's the downside to all these changes? Well, one concern is NFL and college football fans will find these differences too gimmicky and too minor league. It's also worth noting the XFL may not be around long enough to teach viewers some of the more complicated aspects of its game format, or on the flip side, maybe fans won't want to spend all the time necessary to learn a completely new rule set.
XFL quality of play won't compare to the NFL
In August 2019, Chris Graham of the Augusta Free Press wrote about one of the biggest obstacles standing between the XFL reaching financial success or even stability. None of the NFL's 32 franchises are near collapse, meaning over 1,800 players will be signed to active and practice squad rosters every year. Dozens, if not hundreds, of athletes without contracts may spurn the XFL to remain fit and hope to receive shots from NFL teams once starters and reserves suffer unavoidable injuries during training camp practices, preseason games, and regular season encounters.
All of this means the overwhelming majority of XFL talent will sit somewhere between subpar and bad on the football spectrum. In short, many XFL games will be ugly and feature offensive linemen with poor footwork, cornerbacks who can't cover receivers, receivers who drop catchable passes, and quarterbacks who can't read blitzes or coverages. And if you want to know how that might play out, just ask Arena League Football owners how quickly the novelty of trainwreck football wears off for paying customers.
Worst of all for the XFL is that every player signed to the league is dreaming of playing in the NFL and winning a Super Bowl, whether he publicly admits it or not. Quarterback Tommy Maddox won the only MVP award in the history of the original XFL, and that successful season earned him a contract with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Every 2.0 XFL QB hopes to follow in Maddox's footsteps, which would deplete the XFL of any real talent it might find.
WWE isn't nearly as popular as it was years ago, and yeah, that matters
In March 2001, Vince McMahon reigned as the lone king of professional wrestling in North America. The then-World Wrestling Federation acquired former competitor World Championship Wrestling that month, and no other company remained as a challenger in the so-called television 'Monday Night Wars.' In April of that year, the WWE boasted after an edition of Raw that it had become 'the most-watched program ever on TNN (The National Network).' As a result, McMahon's wrestling shows were a great platform for televised XFL advertisements that winter and spring.
But things have changed a lot since 2001. Per Forbes, over the first five weeks of 2020, editions of Raw airing on USA Network drew between 2.03 and 2.40 million viewers every Monday. According to Deadspin, that's down from when Raw attracted 5 million viewers in 2009 and from 5.9 million viewers in 2005.
Xfl League Differences
As of the launch of McMahon's second football league, millions upon millions of wrestling fans who saw XFL commercials that aired on Raw and SmackDown in 2001 no longer watch or show interest in WWE programming. And if the original XFL failed when WWE was far more popular among viewers of varying ages, then history repeating itself with the XFL 2.0 seems inevitable.