I just saw Brian Urlacher get flagged for “roughing the passer” on a particularly vicious two-hand touch.
Quarterbacks are professional athletes. If they can’t handle taking the occasional shot, they should find a new line of work.
This “protecting the QB” crap needs to be pared down to: no helmet-to-helmet, no tackles below the knees when the QB is in the pocket, and that’s it. Who’s with me?
Did the quarterback have the ball?
But…but… as the referee said, Urlacher “flexed his arm muscles”. Can you imagine the on-field carnage if pro-athletes were allowed to flex their muscles willy nilly?
Won’t someone please think of the children!
Ball was released a split second before the tackle.
Are they playing the Packers? Refs have a way of making calls for Brett Favre when he needs them.
There was a Steeler game earlier this year where Aaron Smith was falling at the feet of the QB, who still had the ball. As he fell, the QB threw the ball. As he was landing he grabbed the QBs leg, held it for a second, and then let go as he realized the ball was probably gone. He got a 15 yd penalty for hitting the QB below the knees. He never contacted the QB with any part of this body except his hand and arm, as they wrapped around a leg, and then almost immediately let go. Yes, grabbing someones leg is now a 15 yd penalty
Vikings.
The refs have been instructed by the league to enforce the QB protection rules literaly and stringently, it’s not a decision made by the refs.
Something has to change, because the way it’s been going this year, QB’s might as well be wearing the bright-red “no-hit” jerses next year.
Might have trouble convincing that Smith guy for San Francisco. Saints were hitting him all day long…
The NFL rules are pretty arbitrarily enforced, Oaky. I will give you that.
And might I add that the Titans BEAT Indy? How do you like them apples? Rob Bironas for MVP!
No shit. What a freaking field goal, huh?
I’m starting to wonder if it’s a karmic thing. I’m a long suffering Saints fan. So many times in the past, a flag would snuff out whatever dim hopes we had. This year, it seems that we’re finally seeing things break our way. Lots of key penalties have helped keep drives alive for us…
Heck, you want to talk bizarre penalties, I just saw an absolutely awful call for a crackback in the Dallas-New York game. There was nothing even close to a crackback on that play.
That explains it. Brad Johnson is 38. That’s 97 in NFL years. You gotta show the senior citizens a little respect.
Kevin
Lifelong disappointed Vikings fan. 
I was at the Bears-Vikings game, and now that my fingers are tactile again - let me say:
A-MEN!!
I understand the ‘protect the immobile QB’ theory, but that call was horrific bullshit. The only way Urlacher could have NOT hit Johnson was to have stopped short before the ball got thrown. Johnson’s arm was still moving forward, Urlacher was running towards him, ball gets released, he gets hit. It wasn’t even much of a hit. I’d classify it as a less-than-friendly shove, and came almost simultaneous with the pass leaving Johnson’s hand.
The next quarter, Grossman goes back to pass. Now granted, the way Rex’s been playing of late, the Vikes best chance is to let Rex throw the ball wherever… But instead, they rush him. Rex gets hit by the Viking rusher, who managed to get 2-3 full strides in before hitting him.
No flag.
:dubious:
Yep, terrible call on NY… and I’m for Dallas.
What was worst was when they were showing the disparity; calls that shouldn’t have been made and those that should have but weren’t. The example of the Redskins bending a sacked, pinned Peyton Manning backward while ripping off his helmet was about as maliciously brutal as they come… and no flag.
Don’t worry…Vice President of Officiating Mike Pereira will be on NFL Total Access this week, as he is every Wednesday, to explain why every questionable call went exactly the way it was supposed to, and to remind us again that the refs make no more than one or two bad calls per season.
Or he’ll competely dance around Rich Eisen’s questions. Either or.
Incidentally, while googling to get the correct spelling of "Pereira"I just came across a rather relevant site: Bad Zebras. The posters may not pass the typing test, but they know of which they speak:
I freaking HATE that guy. He’s like Tony Snow and the Iraqi information minister (remember him) rolled into one big Paulie Walnuts-looking bullshit artist.
OOOOOH how I hate him!
Back to the thread, I saw this play, and I have to say it made the NBA refs look GOOD by comparison.
:rolleyes:
OK, it wasn’t that bad. That first call was horrendous, absolutely. (Crackback blocks are very specifically defined, and that wasn’t one by any stretch of the imagination.) But Terry Glenn had just stepped out of bounds on that late hit call (questionable whether the tackler could have stopped, I agree, but he wasn’t ‘inbounds’). Burris didn’t need to throw that vicious block, even if he hadn’t heard the whistle (and it wasn’t at all clear on the replay whether the whistle had blown yet). Shockey wasn’t ‘mugged’, Williams made contact a fraction of a second before the ball arrived (should have been interference, but c’mon). And in between, the 'boys were called for pass interference on a play where, if anybody was committing that infraction, it was Burris.
The Cowboys were the beneficiaries of more bad calls than the Giants. But it sure didn’t look like the referees were Dallas fans, more like they were just massively incompetent, and the incompetence happened to swing Dallas’s way more often than not.
Wow. What a wonderful description.