NFL Rules Committee Gets Something Right

At the latest NFL Owners meeting, one of the new ordinances passed was to eliminate force-out decisions on completions and interceptions near the sidelines. Now, officials only have to see if the receiver's feet land in-bounds or not, with the intended result of consistency.



Look at the above picture. Imagine no defenders there. Will Winslow land with his feet in-bounds or not? It's impossible to tell. The referees didn't rule it a force-out, but they very well could have, which would have impacted the seasons of multiple teams, from the Browns probably going to the playoffs over the Titans as well as effecting the draft spots of three teams.

Many people will say that it's an unfair advantage to the defense, which it can be interpreted as, but what about all the other rules that give an unfair advantage to the offense? Why should there be an invisible boundary for the offensive player that extends off the field, while a defensive player who hits an offensive player before he runs out of bounds gets a penalty? How is this fair? Why should the same game be played on two different planes?

My problem, though, is philosophical. I consider myself to be an empiricist and my point of view is that it is impossible to determine that a player's feet would have landed in-bounds anyway if it wasn't for the defender doing his job and pushing the receiver out of bounds. One can never be completely certain of a future outcome, that's why we keep doing scientific experiments. No matter how many times you test something, there's nothing keeping it from acting differently in the future in a future test.