On Tuesday, Commissioner Roger Goodell repeated the league’s current talking point that roughing the passer penalties are down this year. That’s the new knee-jerk reaction to complaints about specific roughing calls.
“We’ve had less calls than we’ve had in the past,” Goodell told reporters. “There’s been no change to that rule. . . . In any officiating, officials make calls that we’d rather not be called, or we would rather have calls that we prefer they do make. We make that clear to the officials and make it clear to our coaches. We’re not backing off of protecting players that are in a defenseless position or an exposed position that could lead to injury, and we’ll take those techniques out of the game.”
The problem isn’t the number of calls. It’s the constant possibility that roughing the passer will be called in a game-altering moment, even if roughing didn’t actually happen.
We’ll take those techniques out of the game. That’s not what they’re doing. They’re penalizing legitimate techniques through the latitude baked into the “when in doubt, whip it out” language in the rulebook, which encourages officials to throw the flag even if the technique utilized by the defender was fine.
Here’s the actual guidance from the rulebook: “When in doubt about a roughness call or potentially dangerous tactic against the passer, the Referee should always call roughing the passer.”
That should be the on-air explanation for any and all questionable roughing calls. That’s the way the networks that broadcast the games should be describing it to fans. When Mike Pereira or Dean Blandino or Gene Steratore or John Parry or Terry McAulay are asked whether it looks like roughing happened on a given play, they should be saying, “Well, here’s the thing. The rule requires them to resolve any doubt in favor of throwing the flag. So it doesn’t matter if the replay shows roughing. What matters is that there was enough there for the referee to have doubt when watching the action at full speed in real time.”
That’s what’s going on. And it’s going on because the league is willing to alter the outcome of a game in order to build a force field around all quarterbacks, in the name of keeping as many of them as healthy as possible, so that the vast majority of the most-watched shows on TV will be NFL games.
As previously explained, the league has consciously and deliberately torn down the firewall that separates the integrity of each game from the broader business interests of the league. They’re willing to be wrong about roughing calls in order to keep quarterbacks upright.
Total number of calls does not matter. Ever-present chance a referee will throw a flag at a key moment in the game does. Especially in an age of legalized gambling and, in turn, increased suspicion that the fix may be in. What better way to influence the outcome of a game than to seize on the power to resolve any and all doubt in favor of awarding 15 yards of field position and an automatic first down?