Yeah, I was expecting the same thing but this was pretty clear cut, at least according to my understanding of the rule. Look at ref’s reaction, instantaneous flag.
Same. The whole thing reminded me of Danny Trevathan’s hit on Davante Adams a few years back. Had Winston not been going down, it would have been a very good hit; but Winston WAS lower than normal and Blair hit him right in the facemask.
I do agree that if Blair had been lower and hit him in the chest, there would be no penalty. To say some anomalous penalty would be made up because the NFL protects quarterbacks is not credible, though it’s an opinion I’ve seen more of in recent years. You can still hit quarterbacks, and hit them hard. You just have to treat them with a sort-of reversed strike zone - between the shoulders and waist. Lower is better, because if your helmet slides up the chest/back and contacts their helmet - penalty.
Ironically, the upper body is pretty much the only part of the quarterback you are allowed to hit while executing a sack in the pocket.
Yes, you can’t hit them low (to prevent leg injuries) and can’t hit their head. As I said, sacks are still legal, even if they are extremely picky about how they’re done.
So you guys think there would been no penalty flag thrown if Blair had hit Winston in the chest? He was clearly leading with the crown of his helmet, and the QB was being ‘stood up’ by the defender on the ground. The rulebook is pretty clear in that it’s a penalty if the player was termed ‘defenseless.’ I guess it would come down to the determination of the officials as to whether or not Winston was in a ‘defenseless posture.’
One of the definitions of ‘defenseless posture’ is in the rulebook Article 9(a)5:
A runner already in the grasp of a tackler and whose forward progress has been stopped.
So probably a judgement call by the ref if it would have been a penalty.
The analysts certainly didn’t think so. No fines have been levied against Blair so it wasn’t considered egregious by the NFL.
He wasn’t a runner, come on now. 
You are grasping so much!
ETA: By the way, I don’t give Blair the benefit of the doubt. I’ve watched him since he was drafted (in fact I watched him a bit in college too) and he’s aggressive. He is the kind of player who is prone to roughing penalties. Not a dirty player (he’s never been accused of trying to hurt people), but he does hit hard, sometimes harder than necessary, and especially for a Seahawk he frequently doesn’t tackle people safely. (I say that because the Seahawks put an emphasis on this, they even developed safety videos for the rest of the league for how to tackle people safely.) I’m basing my opinion for this play on the replay and the rules in the NFL, not my opinion of the player.
Here is an article from the past about Blair, when he was a rookie. He does have problems.
He is also apparently out for the rest of the season with a knee injury from that game so he won’t be doing any more tackling for a while.
Rule 3, Section 28:
A Runner is the offensive player who is in possession of a live ball (3-2-7), i.e., holding the ball or carrying it in any direction.
(3-2-7 refers to the definition of a live ball.)
Although, to be fair, they did call ‘roughing the passer’, even though he had not thrown the pass, nor was he in the act of attempting to throw a pass.
A QB isn’t considered a runner the moment he gets the ball. There are situations when he is a runner, and the rules change at that point. Here are the rules for “roughing the passer” to help explain:
The rules talk about protections when the QB is in a “passing posture” or when he tucks the ball and becomes a runner. Regardless of the rule you quoted, the QB isn’t a runner until he becomes a runner; specifically “attempting to advance the ball as a runner” in the language of the rules. As is often mentioned in games when a QB attempts to run with a ball, he forfeits the special protections a passer has when he tucks the ball and tries to advance with it; at that point he can be treated the same as a running back or a receiver who is running with the ball. But until then he is a passer, not a runner; those are mutually exclusive things.
As far as hitting a QB with the helmet, again quoting the rules on a roughing penalty, this is what is written as a penalty:
lowering the head and making forcible contact with any part of the helmet against any part of the passer’s body. This rule does not prohibit incidental contact by the mask or non-crown parts of the helmet in the course of a conventional tackle on a passer.
Looking at the video, he turned his head away from Winston, turning his right shoulder toward him. The majority of the force of his tackle was with his right shoulder. His technique was sloppy and the side of his helmet hit Winston’s face mask, which is clearly a penalty, a deserved one, and the officials had it right. If he had struck him lower then the helmet contact would almost surely been incidental, which per the rules is allowed.
To make it clearer, here is a screenshot I took of the video just a split second before contact. You can see that his shoulder is forward. What you can’t see in the still image is Blair turning to his left and lifting his right shoulder right before the hit (you have to go re-watch the video to see that).
As I said, 6 inches lower and that’s a legal hit. As it was done though it was clearly a deserved roughing penalty, regardless of his intent.
But earlier in your post, you quoted, from nfl.com:
Here’s a screenshot I took of the video just before contact. Blair certainly looks like he’s lowering his head:
And here’s the moment of contact. I still contend, that as the rule states, this would have been a penalty no matter where the hit was made, as the helmet made contact before his right arm.
(apologies that you may have to click on each picture to see the full screenshot)
He’s not. Watch the video. He is moving it to the left, squaring up his shoulder. And he wasn’t making forcible contact with his helmet, he made forcible contact with his shoulder.
Again, you need to read all of the rules, not selectively quote what reinforces your mistaken assertions.
Listen to the analysts. They see what I see. “He’s trying to move his head out of the way, trying to hit his midsection. He just caught him a little bit too high. It’s more misfortune for Marquise Blair than anything.”
I’m actually a little less forgiving of Blair because I know his history and he is an enthusiastic but sloppy tackler. Were he a race car driver, he would have a high-powered engine but would be bad at steering. All that being said, he was in this case just a bit too high for it to be legal.
This might help. Here is a “leading with the helmet” penalty. Ironically, this was done by an offensive player, who in this case is the runner.
It’s subtle but what you can see here is that he lines up his helmet with the defender, lowers his head, and charges straight at him. For the most part what you are seeing is similar to what Blair did. The crucial difference is that Blair didn’t aim his helmet straight at Winston, unlike what Josh Jacobs did in the clip above. Blair turned his body to try to hit with his shoulder, and most of the impact was with the shoulder. If you start the video I linked earlier showing the Blair on Winston hit at the 50-51 second mark where they show the angle from behind Blair it gives you the best view of what he was doing.
It’s unfortunate that I can’t find Gene Steratore’s analysis (he is a retired NFL official) which is cut off in the clip, I think it would help even further. 
OK, I’m done. We are obviously not gonna agree on this one.
Can we all at least agree that the roughing the passer penalties where a pass rusher swipes his hand across a QB’s helmet as a follow through from trying to knockdown a pass is total and complete bullshit and does nothing at all to prevent injuries?
I’m on board with that. Though keep in mind the swipe needs to be forceful enough to move the QB’s head, which is what they call “forcible contact”; it can’t be just a tap.
But yeah, in my opinion that is the definition of “incidental” and shouldn’t be a penalty. (The NFL Competition Committee does not agree with me.)
Forcible contact is a super grey area and the way it’s enforced pretty much includes anything beyond a graze as “forcible”. I don’t know if the league has data on it, but I can’t remember a single instance where a QB was concussed as a result of a single hand swipe to the head.
I was listening to the Packers game on the radio while playing board games, so only got bits and pieces. I did hear the 4 tries to get < 5 yards for a TD that the Packers missed.
I saw that the Cardinals were in the Red zone (so could likely at least tie), but the Pack intercepted.
Good job vs a (previously) 7-0 team, without some key players.
Brian
FYI this is last week’s thread, this week’s is here:
Oops, sorry – this was the highest week number I saw in a quick scan (plus it was late)
Brian