Not Again

By: Mike Rifkin

Last Wednesday started the NFL’S league year. While most people focus on the free agency period of the league year, another thing that occurs is teams can file potential rule changes that the owners and the competition committee can discuss. The Los Angeles Rams proposed the rule change and want to make roughing the passer penalties reviewable.

Roughing the passer was one of the most discussed penalties during last season. There are multiple you can look at throughout the season, and I still don’t understand why the penalty was called. But here’s my thing I don’t know if the referees know how to officiate it and throw the flag out of caution. We’ve been down this road before with making penalties challengeable when the NFL made pass interference reviewable. The problem with that was that the calls would often side with whatever the refs had called on the field. I do have a solution to the roughing the passer rule, and it doesn’t involve making it reviewable, but it will make the NFL do some work. 

Instead of making the penalty reviewable, the league should change the rule. The league should keep shots to the head and below the knee as part of the penalty, but I think we need to say a graze of the helmet shouldn’t be called. With what we know about concussions, they can if they want to keep it. But the other parts are where I think fans get confused. The other rules are that a defender can’t land their bodyweight on top of the quarterback and cannot drive the quarterback to the ground. In essence, what the league has done has protected the quarterback so much that every time they go down, a flag will be thrown. So, what would the replay show on bodyweight landing or driving the quarterback to the ground? We will run in circles as they did with the pass interference challenge. I wouldn’t say I like harping on the refs, but when these networks air the games, and their rules analyst is as confused as the fans, that’s not a good thing, so the league should tear up the rule and rewrite it.

If I was in charge and left to change the roughing of the passer penalty, here’s how I would go about it. First, we will leave shots to the head ( I would change for non-forceful blows but understand why the head should be kept) and below the knee. I would throw out the bodyweight rule because it’s hard enough for defenders to get them down. Now they have to focus on where they land. Driving them to the ground should only be enforced if the hit is late or if the whistle has been blown, but that is on the refs to make the in-the-grass ruling more if needed. If roughing the passer continues to be a problem in the NFL, there is one last solution that nobody wants to see: to put flags on the quarterbacks.