Saw thison ESPN this morning (auto play video). Sounds like there could be some discussion of changing the taunting rule to nullify a TD in cases like that Golden Tate play on Monday night.
I’m of two minds on this. On the one hand, yeah, that was a douche move from Tate, and it deserves to be sanctioned with something more than a 15 yard penalty on the kickoff. You take a TD away from a player once, and the likelihood that he’d ever do that again goes down to about zero. I honestly think that would have a bigger impact on that behavior than fines and suspensions. The stupid showboating in this game gets worse every year, and they need to get a handle on it. They don’t tolerate this crap in the college game for at all - hell, those guys can’t even spike the ball - and I don’t think the game suffers for it one bit.
But on the other hand, you essentially have to put a lot of pressure on the refs to determine what is and isn’t taunting on a play in progress, and it could have an outsized impact on a game. On that play on MNF, let’s say that they call the play dead at about the 25 yard line and penalize from there. Now Seattle has the ball on the 40. Maybe they continue the drive and score, maybe they sputter out. Even having to settle for a FG there would have swung that game. I think we’re already seeing enough impact from the refs on games, even though in the vast majority of the cases I’ve seen the calls were technically correct. Taking points off the board might go too far.
I’d be inclined to go with something more along the lines of giving the opposing coach a choice of moving the kickoff back 15 yards or taking the ball at their own 40. And do something like they do with beanings in baseball - issue a warning to both benches, and the next flag they throw on anybody for taunting in the game results in an ejection.
Horrible idea. You should not nullify a play if the penalty did not impact the play. You want to stop taunting? Make it a suspendable offense like two taunting calls in a season and you’re out for a game.
I heard that college football stops the play at the spot of the foul, so I guess it can work and there is no doubt it would end the behavior. I don’t like what Tate did, but it isn’t a really hurting anyone or effecting the outcome of the game. I would not favor this rule change, as I don’t see it as a serious problem requiring such a serious penalty.
Make a 30 yard penalty from the kickoff. The defense won’t be happy that your little stunt made them start fighting the other teams’ next drive from midfield.
What goes through the mind of the first guy to yap at another? What we don’t see in instances like these is that the DBs have probably been talking trash to Tate from the first broken up pass. That doesn’t excuse what he did but it certainly makes it more understandable. What’s not understandable is that somewhere earlier in the game somebody made a play and decided to tell his opponent what a piece of shit he was. Maybe it was the first play of the game, I dunno. What comes over them that they are compelled to do this?
Treat it like a kick-off out of bounds. Give the opposing team the option to have the ball at the 40 or kick from their own 10 yard line. Taunting and celebration penalties will go away quick if the result leads to a few easy field goals.
Yeah, that’s the first thought I had when he started doing that “talk” thing with his hand. His thought process is probably something like “Yeah, talk now, bitch”, and no doubt there had been a lot of trash talking all night. In fact, I was just remembering a couple of weeks ago when Steve Smith of the Panthers had said something about Janoris Jenkins of the Rams running his mouth. I think the quote was something like “If I see him in the street I’m going to punch him in the fucking mouth”. Jenkins had apparently been talking some trash about Smith’s wife during the game.
And lo and behold, who did Tate burn for the big play? Jenkins. It was actually Rodney McLeod coming over late that he was pointing at, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that part of Jenkins’s (and maybe the whole secondary’s) MO is to try to get opponents off their game by running their mouths. So this very likely didn’t happen in a vacuum. Tate still needs to be smarter than that if that was the case. Might be that one of those old truisms that you hear from the announcers applies here - it’s always the retaliation that gets the flag.
The 40 yard no-kickoff penalty sounds more likely than taking away TDs. There really is no place for that kind of stupidity, but you risk getting flags thrown for genuine celebratory antics no directly insulting your opponent.
As for Tate, both the Rams and Seahawks are coached to be total dickwads, it doesn’t matter who “started” it.
I would like to see where the player is penalized. I think that suspension is the only course and should be decided by the commish, not the refs. The player would be suspended without pay for the next game he is eligible for, including a playoff game or Super Bowl.
The problem with that suggestion is that it leads to retaliation which puts a bigger load on the refs. Refs are like prison guards, they have to keep things under control while always being out-manned. If the game gets out of control due to retaliations it is hell for the refs.
I wouldn’t negate a touchdown but the penalty should be substantial. I say penalize the perp, not the team. Ejection and a one game suspension w/o pay should put an end to it. Keep the 15 yards on the kickoff for unsportsmanlike conduct penalty so there is some immediate impact.
Hate the idea. Can we at least *try *to keep the fucking rules out of the way of the game?
But then I’m in the minority, in that I don’t see anything wrong with that kind of taunting/showboating. These guys already have their faces covered up the whole time, and rooting for (or against) robots is no fun. Let the personalities show through, even if some of them are kinda dickish. Anything short of those throat-slashing motions is just fine by me.
Theoretically, but I think that tends to be greatly overstated. Players already taunt each other endlessly, just not in visible ways. And there might be dozens of instances in a given game in which one player feels that another player made a dirty or reckless play. I just don’t find it plausible that allowing finger-wagging and touchdown dances would introduce some kind of retaliation sea-change.
Like I said earlier, taking a TD off the board is probably too much. But I really don’t want to watch a game that has unchecked taunting and showboating, and I doubt I’m alone. We already have plenty of options if we want to watch a bunch of guys act like punks and thugs. I’d rather watch a football game. If that kind of stuff becomes part and parcel of the pro game, I’ll take my viewership to the college level.
Like what? I guess hockey, since they allow actual fighting, but then they have their own crazy unwritten rules about showboating. Boxing, sure.
But anyway. I don’t think anything and everything should be permitted, but by and large I think some back & forth, some showmanship – even to the point of being disrespectful – is a good thing. Games between hated rivals are lots of fun; games between respectful colleagues are less fun. It makes the game more interesting when we can assign motivations and emotions to teams and players (beyond “I want to win,” that is). YMMV, naturally.
I will say that I don’t think anything that happens during the play should be grounds for a taunting penalty. I hate that the NCAA legislates how ball-carriers my run. The penalty for taunting during a play is that you’re performing sub-optimally and running a risk: Golden Tate was almost tackled the other day, and DeSean Jackson’s dumb ass actually fumbled the ball because he was trying to look cool. Etc.
I don’t agree. There is a difference between trash-talking and taunting. Trash-talking goes on all the time but it is between the players. Taunting is an obvious “showing-up” that is visible to everyone. Larry Bird was famous for his trash-talking but I don’t ever recall him sticking a finger in someone’s face or otherwise taunting an opponent to publicly humiliate them.
Players are used to trash-talk. When it devolves into taunting then things can get ugly because then the teammates feel obliged to protect the honor of the team.
What I had in mind with the “punks & thugs” comment wasn’t so much sports oriented as it was about a lot of the “reality” TV and hip-hop culture where it seems that a big part of the entertainment value to a lot of folks is to see somebody get badly dissed. Not my cup of tea, and I’d hate to see football become that. Hell, I love hockey. I’d probably enjoy it more if they cracked down on the fighting a little more. If they hadn’t instituted some of the stuff like keeping the third (and subsequent) guys out of the fights that they did, that sport would have turned into a total mess.
Anyway, I don’t think that taking the showboating out of the game would detract from something like a Bears/Packers (or pick your favorite rivalry) game one little bit. They still ramp up the intensity in those games, the extra motivation can be very obvious without a bunch of silly crap added to the plays.
Trash talking is as old as sports. Hell, they were probably talking shit at each other back in the original Greek Olympics. If Tate was doing what he did to respond to trash talking, it was redundant and pointless. He just burned them for a score. Take a look at the film from that play, you can see Jenkins put his hands up on his helmet as he sees that he just got toasted for a TD. That’s plenty of public humiliation right there.
If Tate just gets the six and trots back to the sideline, he can pretty easily just say something like “yeah keep talking, dickhead” to the DB or DB’s that had been on him. All he accomplished with what he did was to cost his team 15 yards on the kickoff.