NFL fans have been raging online over some terrible roughing-the-passer penalties every week. Hits like this are being called roughing the passer:
This week, the National Football League is said to be considering ejecting players for roughing-the-passer penalties and hits on defenseless players. League executive Troy Vincent said at the NFL owners meetings Wednesday that the ejections were part of a discussion to include roughing the passer calls among reviewable plays.
“The officials, I must say, have been pretty consistent with and very accurate when making that call,” said Vincent, the league’s vice president of football operations. “But they’re human.”
The rule would not only protect quarterbacks.
“QB goes down by a hit, obviously there’s a flag on the field,” NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent said. “Should that player be automatically ejected? Or should that be a reviewable play? That’ll be a topic of what’s reviewed, what should be reviewable.”
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In college, the NCAA imposes a 15-yard penalty and ejection for targeting, defined as a player making “forcible contact to the head or neck area of a defenseless player or contact an opponent with the crown [top] of their helmet.”
The NFL defines the penalty when a player “initiates unnecessary contact against a player who is in a defenseless posture,” which could come via 11 different manifestations. Among them: initiating unnecessary contact on a player in the act of or just after throwing a pass; a receiver attempting a catch “who has not had time to clearly become a runner;” and a runner in the grasp of a tackler whose forward progress has been stopped, via Yahoo Sports.
Prohibited contact includes “forcibly hitting” a defenseless player’s head or neck area with the helmet, facemask, forearm or shoulder. Illegally launching into a player and lowering a head to make forcible contact also violate rules.
Many have voiced their frustrations with roughing the passer, especially when it cost the Atlanta Falcons earlier in the season when Grady Jarrett was flagged on a sack of Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady, which was called a personal foul. If called correctly, which was no penalty at all, the Falcons would’ve had a chance to win the game. Instead, the Bucs were able to run the clock out for the win.
It almost cost the Chiefs when Chris Jones sacked Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr and referees threw a flag because it appeared he dropped all his weight on Carr. Instead, Jones had the ball in his hands on what replay showed was a fumble.
Basically, adding an ejection on top of an already sketchy penalty would make things right.
