Sunday’s game between the Seahawks and Jaguars was marred by another late-game tantrum from Seattle defenders who sometimes have a hard time processing the fact that the team may not be as good as they think it is. Like the final snaps of Super Bowl XLIX, things got ugly, prompting multiple ejections.
But no one was suspended. (Amazingly, defensive lineman Michael Bennett wasn’t even fined for diving in to the legs of Jags center Brandon Linder.) And so the end result of the ejection was missing a snap or two that ultimately didn’t matter, because the game was essentially over.
So here’s an idea, so simple and obvious that it never will be adopted. When a player is ejected, he’s gone for a full 60 minutes of action, even if it carries over to another game.
Thus, get ejected in garbage time of one game, return with the same amount of time left in the next game. Get ejected five minutes into the first quarter of a game, return at the exact same point in the next game. It’s that simple, and it would go a long way toward deterring late-game shenanigans that may not result in a league-imposed suspension.
Of course, that could make officials even more reluctant to issue ejections, since they already shy away from decisions that could affect the outcome of a game. But if the goal is to encourage good behavior -- and to discourage bad behavior -- a 60-minute ejection would work a lot better than the current rules.
Which, again, means it never will happen.
