My thoughts:
1. What I call the "Denver scheme" (named as such because right or wrong, I'll associate it with Gibbs, Shanahan, and the Broncos, ought to be recognized as reprehensible by the NFL and its practitioner coaches be given the treatment Gregg Williams "system" got after it was brought to light. The problem is not the zone-blocking concept per se, it is zone-blocking combined with low blocking/cut blocking/whatever you want to call blocking that emphasizes going knee-hight at the person being blocked.
2. Adding another rule (with the inevitable qualifications and exceptions and sub-sub-sections) is not the solution, however. I don't care if it is a "professional" sport, you don't need a rule book that is hundreds of pages of small print. All that does is encourage everyone to act like lawyers. Lawyers are a necessary institution of modern economic and social life. Non-lawyers acting like lawyers is not. Football is a game and, yes, a business.
But the best businesses should not be run assuming that the participants are the "bad men" of Holmes' "Path of the Law" -- Holmes was correct that "the law" has to be made and operated with the assumption that bad men are involved. But Holmes also recognized that going to law was a remedy for when the system had already failed. Successful business comes not from a system that has already failed. It comes from the actions of people who work together trusting each other. Recognizing that the other guy will be driven by self interest and the desire to win. Playing the game means that each should strive to win with all his ability and effort (the Lombardi principle), but also recognizing that winning is only winning if it is done without also striving to harm the quality of one's opponent's life outside of the game. Lombardi, not Al Davis.
Fooball is not war. War is the pursuit of political objectives by removing one's opponent's ability to choose how to live his life
outside the game. War demands the Marines. War demands people who seek to *make* others behave in particular ways and are willing to use the ultimate force to do it. Football is a way to say "I'm the best" before letting you go and do whatever you do when you are with family, friends, colleagues, customers, and acquaintances.
The purpose of war is not to win a battle. The purpose of war is to destroy the opponent's will. One goes to war because, at bottom, one does not trust the other side to do the "right" thing. War ends only when one opponent is dead or without the will to continue. War doesn't end because "time has run out" and one side has a bigger pile than than the other.
But football games do. They end after 60 minutes because the players trust each other to "hold back" from actions designed to affect what happens after the 60 minutes is up.
One cannot follow both the Lombardi vision and the Davis vision. Following the Lombardi vision means trusting that your opponent will. Following the Lombardi vision means recognizing that the Green Bay Packers are the *third* priority. Not the first or even the second. The third.
Lawyers love rules. They love rules because their moral obligation is to represent one side's (their "client's") interest above the interest of all others, and because rules are tools to manipulate in favor of one's client. Rules are instruments of war.
It is a paradox of law. We collectively need "the law" in order to ensure that *life* doesn't degenerate into a Hobbesian war of all against all, to protect us against those individuals or groups who would make war upon us. And we need lawyers to use the law to protect us. But the more rules we have, the more we show we are unwilling to trust each other. And the more we are unwilling to trust each other, the more we see ourselves "at war," the more likely war becomes.
Outlawing cut blocks isn't going to stop the injuries of war. It's only going to give people more incentive to hide behind their lawyers and their own lawyerly rationalizations. It merely justifies the making of a game on Sunday into a war affecting more of Monday through Saturday.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)