The new on-field positioning of NFL umpires isn't concerning Indianapolis Colts President Bill Polian as much as many would believe. Polian, one of the league's more prominent voices and a member of the NFL's Competition Committee, said while there were issues involving the umpire's change in position in the Colts' nationally televised game this past Thursay, he said he's not overly concerned about the situation and he doesn't believe it will hurt the Colts' offensively. "If I thought that would be a bi-product of it, obviously I would not have voted for it," Polian said Saturday. The situation caused issues for the Colts Thursday. Twice early during a 59-24 loss to Green Bay the Colts were penalized for snapping the ball too quickly -- i.e., before the umpire had cleared the running back. It was no coincidence that the situation became a high-profile issue during the third preseason game, Polian said. "We recognized as a committee that the third preseason game was going to be a good test, because in virtually all cases your top-line players were playing and playing a long time," Polian said. "In our case, we told the league office and the officiating department that we would do all we could to push the tempo and try to create situations where we could find out what kind of picture we were going to see. That's what occurred. We'll go back and talk about the postmortem. I'm sure there are some tweaks that they will make and we'll move forward." Source: NFL Fanhouse
