Fixing pass interference calls 15 yards at a time
By Clark Judge | CBSSports.com Senior Writer Follow ClarkI would like to thank referee Walt Anderson and his crew for reminding us this week what's wrong with the NFL: the pass-interference penalty. There is no way it should cost anyone more than 15 yards.
It doesn't in college, and it shouldn't in the pros.
But it does, so we have Coleman's crew last Monday walking off nine pass-interference calls for 205 yards, and that's not right. There is no way one penalty should change the outcome of a game, but the pass-interference call can. It can cost you 15 yards. It can cost you 20. It can cost you 30. Or it can cost you 41, as it did Green Bay on Monday, setting up Baltimore's second touchdown.
|
|
| Tramon Williams makes a pick Monday, but earlier was flagged three times for 106 yards. (AP) |
"They hold us to a higher standard because we're professional athletes," said New York Giants cornerback Terrell Thomas. "If you commit a foul then it's going to cost you."
That I understand. What I don't understand is that if you commit a foul other than pass interference it won't cost you more than 15 yards. Look what happened in last Sunday's Dallas-Giants game: At the end of the first half, Cowboys offensive tackle Flozell Adams belted an unsuspecting Justin Tuck from behind. He was flagged for a personal foul and penalized 15 yards.
Period.
Yes, he later was fined $50,000. He should have been, especially considering his history of -- how shall we put this? -- transgressions. But his team wasn't fined for a cowardly and potentially dangerous hit on Tuck. It was penalized 15 yards, a call the Giants declined.
But let's say Thomas was caught shielding a receiver from the football with his forearm, or the Cowboys' Terence Newman bumped his opponent off a pass. Then what happens? Uh-huh, it could have cost their clubs more, way more, than 15 yards.
It did at the end of the Detroit-Cleveland game last month. There was a pass-interference call in the end zone on what should have been the final play, and the Browns were penalized 31 yards. That extended the contest one snap, and that one snap cost Cleveland a victory. It lost on a 1-yard touchdown pass. Final score: Detroit 38, Cleveland 37.
"You see [pass interference] called more because the NFL is about scoring points," said Cincinnati safety Chris Crocker. "People want to see a lot of points. If the point total was down from the previous year the following year there are going to be a lot of pass interference or illegal contact calls because that will be a point of emphasis. That's just how it is."
That is one man's opinion. It is not mine. I believe you should have a level playing field, and having one call cost you 40 or 50 yards is not what I call equitable -- particularly when that call is what the Giants' Domenik Hixon termed "a judgment decision." Hixon is diplomatic. This is one of those topics where one man's ceiling is another man's floor, with pass interference subject to an official's interpretation. What Coleman's crew may see as pass interference, another may not.
"I have mixed feelings about that rule," said New York Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis. "It makes you much better in your technique [but] it gives the offense and the wide receiver a huge advantage over us. We're mimicking them, yet we don't know where the ball is because our backs are to them. If we went to the college rule offenses wouldn't be scoring that much, and stats wouldn't be as high."
Offenses today score at prodigious rates, with New England averaging 36.8 points per game two years ago and New Orleans averaging 36.7 this season. Quarterbacks are producing 300-yard games at dizzying speed, too, with 82 of them this season -- nearly seven per week. Don't tell me they need pass-interference calls to help pad those numbers because they don't. They're getting there on their own.
There is something else going on: The presumption with pass interference is that the receiver would have caught the ball were he not impeded. But I don't know that that's the case. In fact, I saw Braylon Edwards drop a certain touchdown last week with nobody within 15 yards of him. Three days later, I saw Nate Washington do the same thing after he ran past the Indianapolis secondary.
"Those DBs just have to get their heads around," said Cincinnati receiver Chad Ochocinco. "You get your head around, you don't have to touch [the receiver] at all. If you're very good at locating the ball you don't have to turn your head.
"They use their arms and they hold and they grab and they keep us from catching the ball instead of playing [their positions] the right way. It's cool to feel where the receiver is, but you have to look back for the ball. When you don't that's when the penalty comes in."
So, then, he's OK with, say, a 50-yard penalty?
"At this level, yeah," he said.
I'm not -- especially at this level. Make the rules uniform. If a defensive lineman belts his opponent in the head he is penalized 15 yards. Simple as that. But if a defensive back hand checks a receiver on a deep ball he may or may not get penalized. And if he is, the cost could be 40 or 50 yards. I don't get it. I don't think the NFL does, either, and thank you for reminding us, Walt Anderson.
"It's kind of like a guy driving to the basket," said San Diego coach Norv Turner. "One time he gets hammered, makes the shot and nothing is called. The next time he's barely touched and is going to the foul line for two free throws.
"There are some pass-interference calls you want to be 50-yarders -- say, where the [receiver] is behind the secondary and is pulled down. But there are some that you don't. The problem is: How do you differentiate between the two?"
You don't. You just make the call 15 yards and leave it at that.
