Browner's penalty negating McCourty TD

pwes said:

I like your enthusiasm. But no way would I fund a millionaires fines.

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A crowd sourced retaliation against this season's terrible officiating could go somewhere. I'd open it up to perceived terrible calls against other players. If that doesn't get the nfl looking at itself trash what will?

That said, tried to get the fund going through my phone but the site was not cooperating. It would not be against their rules as stated tonight.

Something has to be done. The nfl should not be liable for a receiver catching a goober ball. At the same time, they should protect said player against subsequent, immediately recurring goober balls.

Jlaff said:

That's some fine statutory interpretation. Hope that's the kind of thing these Refs discuss.

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Could it be as fine an interpretation as saying "area" means outside an "area"?

NFL will probably fine Browner and then next year use his hit in a video showing the proper form for making a hit.

TheBostonStraggler said:

Could it be as fine an interpretation as saying "area" means outside an "area"?

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Hochuli's crew can't count to eleven...Just saying...

Jlaff said:

Even if that WAS a hit on a defenseless receiver, do the rules actually contemplate a receiver bobbling the ball indefinitely? Receivers are consistently being hit the second (or split second before) they touch the ball without flags.

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Once the ball is bobbled it is the same as a tipped ball, open season.

That said, Browner's hit was legal in all contexts. He is a massive corner who moves like his position dictates but whose inertia is ridiculous. 230, moving at high end speed against much lighter wideouts...that's not a penalty, simply the class of the league.

I'll be starting a Kickstarter campaign tomorrow. Initially to fund any fine, secondarily to fund other terrible "football play" fines. After that, whatever sort of pushback against Goodell is possible.

In one of the GIFs above, it actually looks like a helmet to helmet hit, even though from other angles there's clearly space between the helmets at all times. So I understand how the mistaken call could have been made.

Btw, lost in the BS nature of the call (and proper due given to those who feel the call was not BS) is Browner getting it friggin! done!. Big TE coming across the middle, Browner does it right and uses his shoulder, does not go helmet to helmet or helmet to neck, lays the friggin wood to the TE, creates an incompletion/turnover. PERFECT! MAJOR kudos to Browner. It's that kind of football that could be the difference maker when playing the knife fight brawl known as the Playoffs.

Please don't stop doing it Browner. If the refs call it and some fans think those hits are wrong? Don't care, keep doing it....

Sucks the guy got hurt but it was a beautiful shoulder-to-shoulder/chest hit.

woolster22 said:

Once the ball is bobbled it is the same as a tipped ball, open season.

That said, Browner's hit was legal in all contexts. He is a massive corner who moves like his position dictates but whose inertia is ridiculous. 230, moving at high end speed against much lighter wideouts...that's not a penalty, simply the class of the league.

I'll be starting a Kickstarter campaign tomorrow. Initially to fund any fine, secondarily to fund other terrible "football play" fines. After that, whatever sort of pushback against Goodell is possible.

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That's another good point. I thought when a ball is tipped, the rules of eligible receivers are out the door. A defender can maul a player attempting to catch a tipped ball (I say "player" because, as I understand it, he is no longer identified as an eligible receiver -- he is player just like any player, such as an OL, who can catch the ball and run with it.

Further, if you are running with the ball bobbling it, how is that a defenseless player?? Do the rules consider him a defenseless player even though he is on his feet running forward and looking forward, concentrating on something specific in front of him (in this instance the ball). If that's "defenseless" then there are just about 22 defenseless players on every play.

(1) There is a rule for helmet to helmet/neck. (2) There is a rule to hitting a defenseless eligible receiver. It appears #1 applies to Browner's hit only if the neck area encompasses another area outside the neck. #2 applies to Browner's hit when a receiver is running with the ball for more than a second, face forward, bobbling the ball, and is hit.
I'm still trying to find how rules 1 and 2 were intended to, and the intent of the Comp Comm was specifically to, say this extremely wide interpretation is what is what was intended, and the refs have been enforcing it with that wide interpretation. I have seen nothing to indicate the Comp Comm and the refs have been throwing that wide net to rules 1 and 2.

I see why they made the call, the referee obviously assumed he hit him with the helmet. I don't think that they should review flags because of how long it would take but this is really an issue where the game was going too fast for the official to see what happened

Maybe the officials should make calls based on what they see and logic. Making them based on assumptions and emotion sure doesn't seem to work.

If that hit was to the head the TE is leaving on a stretcher.

Giving a team 15 yards because they made bad decisions is not helping the game. Applying the rule like they did is like charging someone with manslaughter because a drunk driver cashed into their car and died.

I hate those dunk drivers....lay off the donuts you morons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Joker said:

I hate those dunk drivers....lay off the donuts you morons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Sunova

On the post game show Law & Brown thought that call was a joke, as ex players they wondered if this was still tackle football, clean hit, terrible call.

If a player delivers a big hit; I believe refs now automatically throw a flag . They are now throwing flags based on the result. The same thing happened in the Broncos vs. Rams game where the safety was flagged on a legit hit.

Gwedd said:

I don't have any good answers yet, but there needs to be one. Poor refereeing should never cost one team or the other the game.

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Speaking as a referee for another sport, you have to be able to live with the refs. I think they got this one wrong, but let's look at their priority list. Their job is to facilitate a safe and fair game. Player safety has become a massive point of emphasis in the NFL and NCAA sports (most of the ref crews work NCAA as well). They know they are being evaluated on keeping players safe and they act that way (for instance the Jets game had an official have a quick word with Hightower to make sure he uncovered the Jets' long snapper as a pro-active safety move).

Unless the official was in a perfect position (at an angle down the field (probably 15 yards down field) and thus out of position for the rest of his responsibilities, the Browner hit looks really bad. He sees a launching, he sees contact near the collarbone, he sees a head snap, he sees everything that he has been trained to see as an illegal hit, and he is seeing it straight on with Browner between the official and the receiver. It looks bad from 90% of the probable views that the official who flew the flag had. In the tenth of a second to process, everything he is seeing is screaming personal foul.

He got it wrong, but it is an understandable failure.

ThatllMoveTheChains!!! said:

Maybe the officials should make calls based on what they see and logic. Making them based on assumptions and emotion sure doesn't seem to work...

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It was a logical call on what the official saw or thought he saw. That hit has several of the highlights/teaching points for illegal hits. The official got it wrong, but for understandable reasons. Anything with humans in the decision loop will occassionally get a good process with bad inputs which leads to bad results.

rlcarr said:

You can disagree with the rule as written (and that's a fair thing to do), but given that the rule as written says it's illegal to among other things contact a "player attempting to make a catch" in the "neck area", even with "the shoulder", I don't think the call is as outrageous as many are making it out to be.

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I personally don't think that is going to get a fine. The shoulder clearly makes contact with the chest plate.

I can see why, in real time, the referee throws that flag. When I saw the hit in real time, whilst I loved it, I did concede when the flag went down that that was very close to being in the head or neck area.

On replay I don't think it is that bad. Like the Rams hit on Sanders a few weeks back...it was close to the head and neck area but on replay it was clear it was a good hit.

I'll be surprised if Browner gets fined, but I can understand why that call gets made. Referees have a split second to make that call and they don't get a second look like we do.

They've changed the rules so that TD plays get an automatic review from upstairs. IMO turnover plays are similarly huge and deserve the same treatment.

Helmet to helmet should be reviewable if 12 men on the field and looking for a tip ball on pass interference is. You could quickly take a look and see if the helmets collided.