Some other interesting rules have come out today as well
Earlier today, we touched on the changes to the kickoff rules for the 2024 season that came out of the NFL League Meetings in Orlando. That wasn’t the only change that was passed today, so let’s do a quick rundown of some of the new rules and other things that could affect the Minnesota Vikings and the 31 other teams that aren’t nearly as important.
The first thing to talk about is that the league has once again changed the rule governing a team’s third quarterback. Now, the league has ruled that teams can have a quarterback on the practice squad and elevate him to the active roster an unlimited number of times during the season. Last season, the rule was that the third quarterback had to occupy a spot on the 53-man roster, but now a team can leave them on the practice squad and just call them up prior to the game.
Another change has to do with how teams handle their final cutdowns as it pertains to injured players. Now, while each team is making their final cuts to 53, they can place two players on injured reserve with the designation to return. The rule used to be that a player placed on IR before the final roster cuts would have to miss the entire season, but now a team can have two players that can go on IR and be brought back. Those two players will count against a team’s allotment of eight players that can return from IR during the season.
In addition, the league has pushed the trade deadline back one week. The trade deadline had been the Tuesday following the Week 8 games, but will now be the Tuesday following the Week 9 games instead.
There were also a couple of things that aren’t part of the rulebook that will be new this season.
The league announced that there will be an NFL playoff game that streams exclusively on Amazon Prime, which is where all of the Thursday Night Football games are shown. The league had a playoff game that was exclusive to NBC’s Peacock service last year and nobody seemed to like the idea, but that hasn’t deterred the NFL from doing it again anyway.
Lastly, the “in-season” edition of the NFL show Hard Knocks will no longer feature just one team. Instead, the focus will now be on an entire division. No word yet on which division it will be for this coming season, but it honestly wouldn’t be surprising if it was the NFC North and, as a result, we’d get an inside look at what’s happening with the Vikings and the rest of the division.
I believe that covers just about all of the changes that have come out of the league meetings thus far. If anything else materializes, we’ll talk about it here.