The NFL Is Considering Adding College-Style Targeting Rule With Automatic Ejections For Next Season

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After this week’s brutal Steelers-Bengals Monday Night Football game which featured several big hits and led to the suspension of Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, the NFL is reportedly ready to discuss adding a college-style targeting rule for next season.

Via NewsDay

The NFL will discuss the possibility of adding a targeting rule that would require mandatory ejection for players who hit defenseless opponents above the shoulder. The framework of the rule, in place since 2013 in college football, is on the February 2018 agenda of the NFL’s powerful competition committee.

“I think it’s something that we have to consider,” said Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, during a conference call Wednesday with reporters.

“We’ve seen it work. It’s worked to a degree. It’s clean. That play is a reviewable play at the collegiate level. But we think there’s been some positives, talking to some of the conferences and the officials [at the NCAA level] and also some of the student-athletes, that it is a deterrent. It’s something that we will consider. It is on our agenda.”

Steelers Mike Mitchell has been a vocal critic of the negative reaction to the hits by the league.

Everybody hates the targeting rule in college football so I’m not sure that’s the right solution. In the end the NFL is going to have to come to terms that football is a violent game and you no matter what you do you can’t really make it safer.