Unwritten football rules the Baltimore Ravens, rest of NFL face

The Ravens aren’t alone in understanding odd and sometimes silly rules pertaining to football both they and the rest of the NFL have to deal with.

The Baltimore Ravens recently were involved in some proposed rule changes entering 2020, although they’re not the ones fans would argue and debate about for months. Sure, there are some rule changes we’ll likely see in the coming seasons. Are kickoffs and extra points going the way of extinction? How about the overtime rules? Is the NFL going to adopt the kind of system college football has?

And what constitutes a catch or pass interference anyway? Even with the advent of instant-replay technology, it seems as if those ever-changing rules are cloudier now than ever before.

Most of those are spoken, diagnosed rules defined out well enough in the NFL rulebook. They’re up for debate here and there, but for the most part, it’s pretty understandable what fans are going to expect from the officials.

But what about those pesky and sometimes-obscure unwritten rules? The gray area here is almost bigger than what constitutes pass interference.

Fernando Tatis Jr. of Major League Baseball’s San Diego Padres took a swing on a 3-0 pitch with his team up big over the Texas Rangers. The result was a grand slam, angering the Rangers and raising the age-old question whether it was “proper” for a player to be so aggressive in such a situation:

Baseball is perhaps the biggest example of archaic and antiquated unofficial rules that honestly don’t make much sense. Bat flips, showboating and verbal smack talk haven’t exactly been endorsed by America’s pastime.

Perhaps they should.

So, how about the NFL’s unwritten rules? What are those, and are there any the Ravens, or the rest of the league for that matter, would like to see go away for good?

Let’s have some fun.