Yo, Clay Matthews. James Harrison feels your frustration.
“Right now, they’re trying to make Clay the poster boy,“ Harrison told USA TODAY Sports, alluding to the controversial roughing-the-passer penalties the Packers linebacker has drawn. “In his whole career, leading into this year, he got four total. Now he’s got three in three games?”
Of course, this resonates with Harrison, the ex-linebacker who retired this year after 15 NFL seasons and was once himself the NFL’s undisputed poster boy for a crackdown on violence. It’s hardly a surprise that the Steelers’ all-time sack leader, who was fined by the NFL well in excess of six figures in one year alone, is a member of a growing chorus expressing disgust with the application of a rule that is a “point of emphasis” this season for officials.
Through three weeks, 34 roughing-the-passer penalties have been called league-wide, compared to 16 such infractions at the same point in 2017.
“They’ve taken a rule that was supposed to be ‘can’t pile-drive a dude’ to where if you land on him, it’s a foul,” Harrison said. “So now you’ve got to try to get out of the way from landing on someone. …There are times when you’re not going to be able to get your weight off of a guy, especially if you’re tacking a guy at a certain angle. You just can’t. That’s the most ridiculous part of it.”
You can’t write the history of the evolution of the NFL’s emphasis in legislating a safer game for players without Harrison. A turning point in the league’s approach occurred on Oct. 17, 2010, when Harrison knocked out two Browns – wide receivers Josh Cribbs and Mohamad Massaquoi – with vicious blows to the head. He was initially fined $75,000 (later reduced to $50,000) for the latter hit. But more significantly, the NFL almost immediately declared that players who committed illegal hits to the head would be subject to suspensions.
Yet Harrison, who over the years has directed many jabs at the NFL, its rules enforcers and Commissioner Roger Goodell, has a point. The NFL has gone too far in trying to protect the quarterbacks they are determined to try to keep on the field. Not only are defenders hesitant in sacking quarterbacks (who in some cases are suddenly equipped with another opportunity to escape and make a play), but they also must continue to deal with flopping or a last-second move.
“Sometimes when a quarterback sees you coming, he’ll drop down,” Harrison said. “So now you’re hitting him as he’s trying to drop, and there’s no way you’re going to be able to hold yourself from falling onto him. It’s a rule that’s not possible.”
There’s virtually no chance the rule would be rewritten in the middle of the season, but the application of the rule could be tweaked to add a layer of context – much like the helmet rule that has had a dramatic decrease in called penalties since the first couple of weeks of preseason.
We’ll see. The NFL’s competition committee can revisit the purpose of emphasizing the rule this year, when it conducts its regularly scheduled conference call next week.
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