Team owners passed two player health and safety-related rules Tuesday at the NFL Annual Meeting in Phoenix. One rule bans peel-back blocks, and the other keeps teams from overloading one side of the defensive line on point-after and field-goal attempts.

Still at issue is the controversial rule proposal to ban crown-of-the-helmet hits by ball carriers.

The peel-back or chop block is outlawed inside the tackle box by the approved rule change. Such a block would be a 15-yard penalty.

This likely will be known as the “Brian Cushing Rule,” after the Houston Texans linebacker who suffered a season-ending knee injury last season on an inside chop block.

“If my injury further prevents other injuries, then that’s success and there can be some good to come out of my injury,” Cushing recently said. “Hopefully, my injury does change the rule and in the future will prevent tons and tons of knee injuries.”

The overload rule was created because kick defense teams were rushing through the gaps created by lining up more defensive players than the offense could block. Defensive teams now can have just six or fewer players on each side of the snapper at the line of scrimmage. Players not on the line can’t push teammates on the line into blockers.

After looking at a lot of tape, NFL Competition Committee members found too many injuries were caused by this formation.

“They will no longer permit defense rush players, team ‘B’ players, to push their teammates through the gaps and overload,” St. Louis Rams coach Jeff Fisher, a Competition Committee member, said before the meeting. “This proposal also creates a situation where the snapper now becomes a defenseless player and he gets helmet-to-helmet protection.”

Said Dean Blandino, NFL vice president of officiating: “The idea there is to eliminate some of the mismatches that we were seeing, especially on the edge.”

– Bill Bradley, contributing editor