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This idea popped into my head the other day.

In baseball, whenever a relief pitcher is brought in, the game is delayed while they get a certain number of "warm up pitches". And if the pitcher is coming in due to the previous pitcher getting injured, they get even more warmups.

What if such a concept was introduced into football when a QB goes down with an injury?
Let the backup QB have a couple minutes to get loose/warm up.

Maybe something along the lines of having two options:
1) no extra warmup time, but the original QB can come back in after sitting just one play (i.e. the current situation)
2) the coach can elect to take the extended "injury timeout", but the QB that went out with the injury couldn't come back in for X amount of plays (or for the rest of the series, whichever is less)

That way it wouldn't delay the game unnecessarily when the QB just gets the wind knocked out of him or whatever, and the backup just comes in for one play to hand the ball off on a running play. But on more severe QB injuries, the replacement gets a little more time to get up to speed.

I mean, they already give quarterbacks special privleges/protection anyway that other players don't get.

Nope - more than in any sport, injuries are part of the game.

That's kinda covered by the NFL's bogus 3rd string QB rule.

SuperHornet wrote:That's kinda covered by the NFL's bogus 3rd string QB rule.

how's that go? (I've never heard of it. but then, I don't follow the NFL all that closely)

This is why I've always been of the opinion that, particularly in college where there's no NFL-style pre-season, one should work in the backup QBs, particularly the 2nd stringer, as much as possible, particularly early in the season and in blowouts. This serves a three-fold purpose: it gives valuable PT to the backups, it prevents the starter from being knocked out during mop-up time, and it gives the starter a chance to observe what's going on from the outside to verify or correct what he might have seen earlier. There's nothing worse than resorting to a backup with no recent PT when the starter goes down in the playoffs or important playoff-bearing games. If you give the backup a series or two early in the game, like in the second quarter, you can do it without too much impact on the game.

Of course, this idea is usually a bit too "old-fashioned" for some, usually scorned as "stupid" like quick kicks, return kicks, and drop kicks.