Alan Truex: NFL stirs outrage by babying the quarterbacks
In its zeal to protect the health and longevity of the most enthralling performers in pro football – the quarterbacks – the NFL is producing chaos on the field and even more so in the television booths. Just when we’re starting to figure out what a catch is and how much you can tilt your helmet without lowering it, we have to wrestle with roughing-the-passer.
The league is coming very close to shielding the passer from any physical contact from a defensive player. Before long they will be issuing a purple heart to any quarterback who’s injured by an illegal hit.
And just about everything is dangerous and illegal that involves aggression against a quarterback. Commissioner Roger Goodell’s office is being accused of babying the quarterbacks. In fact, the current vernacular now includes the phrase “burping the quarterback.”
That is what Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews was penalized for doing to Kirk Cousins, quarterback of the Minnesota Vikings. Matthews was accused of lifting Cousins off the ground and then guiding him into it.
I don’t think a review of the tape shows Cousins being lifted or being treated unsportsmanly by Matthews. But you be the judge.
CLICK HERE for video.
It’s worth noting that Cousins did not think he’d been fouled. As diplomatically as possible, he characterized it as “a generous call.”
It was undoubtedly significant, erasing a Cousins interception with under two minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. The game went to overtime and ended in the rarest of scores: 29-29.
A week later, Matthews was involved in more phantom roughness. Referee Craig Wrolstad flagged him for landing on Alex Smith in the third quarter of Sunday’s game between Green Bay and Washington at FedEx Field.
The Packers were outraged. Their burly coach, Mike McCarthy, stalked Wrolstad, who backpedaled faster than one or two of the cornerbacks for the Houston Texans.
This is hardly like Major League Baseball, where the umps stand their ground, bravely daring anyone to touch them and risk missing weeks of action and salary.
NFL Football Operations quickly defended Wrolstad’s call, tweeting: “This is a foul for roughing the passer: the defender lands with all or most of the defender’s weight on the passer. Rule 12, Section 2, Article 9(b).”
So how can a ref determine if the defender is putting 49% of his weight on the passer, which is no penalty? Or 51%, which is illegal? More science is needed.
Rodney Harrison, retired All-Pro safety who’s now a studio analyst for NBC, said: “I don’t think the players know exactly what the refs are looking for. Clay Matthews tried to move his head away from initiating helmet to helmet, and he tried to avoid putting his weight on the quarterback.”
Tony Dungy, another former player now with NBC, agreed that Matthews did all he reasonably could do to avoid hurting Smith. “We all know the difference between landing on a guy and driving a guy into the ground. Take the driving out of the game, but don’t tell me I’ve gotta try to get a sack and then somehow jump back off you without hurting myself . . . it’s impossible.”
It’s not like Matthews is an outlaw. He incurred four roughing-the-passer penalties in 10 years in the league. He’s been cited for three such infractions in the first three games of this season. Naturally he’s not happy with the safety reforms.
“This league is going in a direction that I think a lot of people don’t like,” he said. “I think they’re getting soft. The only thing hard about this league is the fines they levy on guys like me who play the game hard. Obviously when you tackle a guy from in front, you’re going to land on him.”
The NFL is battling to keep its television ratings from tumbling off a cliff. The league lost 10 percent of its viewers last season. Polling indicated that one factor alienating fans is the prevalence of concussion and other life-threatening dangers. Middle-aged men are seeing their childhood heroes – Kenny Stabler, Mike Webster, Johnny Unitas, Nick Buoniconti – withering or dying young because of football trauma.
The NFL owners became interested in the safety of the players when it began damaging the bottom line. They fully understand how healthy quarterbacks bring revenues.
The fractured collarbone Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers suffered last year motivated the league to try to counter the impact of sack attempts. There’s discussion of changing the rules to prevent a defender from hitting the passer at all when he’s standing in the pocket. The defender must be “going for the ball” instead of any part of the thrower’s body.
Rodgers thinks they’ve gone too far. In the game with Minnesota he was sacked by Eric Kendricks, but it didn’t count. “I saw a late flag,” Rodgers said, “and couldn’t believe there was a penalty on the play. It’s still a collision sport, and those to me are not penalties.”
No, they’re business decisions. If Rodgers can’t stay upright on a wobbly knee, America’s prime time audience will shrink at the sight of DeShone Kizer or Brett Hundley quarterbacking the Pack.
The NFL was looking forward to Oct. 15 with Rodgers sharing the Monday Night stage with another celebrity QB, San Francisco’s Jimmy Garoppolo.
Alas, Garoppolo sustained a season-ending knee injury when he refused to run out of bounds but chose to ram his right shoulder into Chiefs cornerback Steven Nelson. Chris Simms, former NFL quarterback who co-hosts Pro Football Talk (NBCSN), said Garoppolo violated one of the maxims of football: “You always protect your throwing shoulder. That is your money-maker.”
The devastating misstep by Garoppolo, who’s not a running quarterback in the first place, caused speculation by Simms that his brain was addled by a popular pain medication: “I would love to know if Jimmy G took Toradol before the game. It numbs the nervous system.”
Toradol is an anti-inflammatory non-steroid that reduces pain but can have debilitating side effects: anxiety, confusion, depression and euphoria.
Football is a uniquely demanding sport – physically, emotionally, mentally — that now seems behind the times. Perhaps it’s not just the NFL that’s getting soft, or at least getting more concerned about health issues. The League searches for a balance, but even quarterbacks are complaining of wussification. Baltimore’s Joe Flacco: “It’s a violent sport. It’s meant to be that way. We all sign up to get hit.”
Mike Florio, who co-hosts PFT with Simms, believes it’s futile to fight the trend toward civility. “If people don’t like it, quit watching football. Because it’s not going to change.”
