It's an incredibly suspect rule if that's the case. Because it favours offside play in a really poor way.

Even in the last 2 years you would have seen situations of players being called offside in these circumstances, but not even think about it. Basically any time a defender touches a through ball he makes any players behind him onside under this rule.

This means a striker can now stand goalside of a defender, right next to him, and if his midfielder passes him the ball by putting it straight at the defender he can tackle the defender straight away from an offside position, because the defender touched the ball? The linesman raises his flag 100% of the time in this situation, in any season including this one. (well, 99.9% after today).