I know what your saying IM.
The clock used to stop anytime you went out of bounds. They did away with that, to speed up the game.
Making things different for the last 2 minutes doesn't make sense for me for this reason.
The whole rest of the game it could turn out to be just as important if the clock is stopped or not. Of course you might not REALIZE it at the time, but it could turn out that way. To me, anytime you go out of bounds the clock should stop.
But i doubt it will ever go back to that way.

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I agree with you, IM, except that I think if the player is down in bounds, then the clock should continue to run.

As I've said before, I think officials should be strictly warned not to blow the whistle until they are absolutely sure the play is dead (preferably, the player is on the turf); you never know when the player could have broken a tackle and made a play. I remember last year, Patriots fans bitched for months that the officials handed the Superbowl to the Giants because on the "miracle catch" play, they failed to call Eli Manning sacked by reason of forward progress stopped. I never understood this; to me there was absolutely no reason to declare him down, since he never stopped moving and did indeed elude the defenders before launching the ball downfield.

Several plays that would formerly have been declared force-outs have gone against us this season, but at least as many have gone in our favor. I think the NFL needs to continue to weed out judgment calls from the rule book. Too many close games hinge on these plays.

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