Chiefs pass rusher Tanoh Kpassagnon was baffled with his controversial roughing the passer penalty today against the Bears.
Kpassagnon, who was flagged after a sack of Bears quarterback Chase Daniel, said the NFL’s new rule preventing tacklers from putting most of their weight on a quarterback when bringing him down, makes it impossible to do his job.
“I think it was just landing on him with the tackle. I don’t know,” Kpassagnon told Pro Football Weekly. “I guess they kind of want me to do something that a lot of people think is physically impossible.”
Kpassagnon said he believes the new rule against landing with your weight on the quarterback is going to be even harder to adjust to than the new rule against lowering the helmet to initiate contact.
“Helmet rule, it’s just keep your head up,” Kpassagnon said. “We’ve all been taught it’s safer for both players — I understand safety of the game. Everybody wants to keep their head safe, their body completely [safe]. It’s a lot harder than just the helmet rule, on both sides, calling it and trying to fix it. Still, football is football.”
Football is football, and football is a rough game. The NFL is trying to legislate a lot of the roughness out of the game, but that may be impossible without fundamentally changing the game.