Belichick takes ownership of OT roughness penalty v Jets

[goheels22002]

Bill Belichick: Blame me for Patriots? critical penalty - Sports - The Boston Globe

My hat is off to Bill Belichick for stepping up, taking ownership of the penalty, and protecting his player from unnecessary criticism.

The rule makes sense from a player safety point of view to protect interior offensive linemen from having 650 pounds of defender slammed into them at the snap, but the 15-yard penalty makes little sense if it has no bearing on the play.

My feeling is that this one should be variable depending on the advantage given the team that commits the penalty. It's like an inadvertant vs. severe face mask penalty. Severe should be 15 yards if they block a punt or field goal attempt, 5 yards tacked onto the end of the play if there is no direct consequence. In this case, the Patriots should have the ball five yards further from their goal line from where the ball was kicked.

The incidental contact with the face mask was almost never called if the guy's head wasn't turned in some way to put him at risk. This rule is the same sort of thing.

 

[buile]

My hat is off to Bill Belichick for stepping up, taking ownership of the penalty, and protecting his player from unnecessary criticism.

Well, it actually ~is~ a coaching mistake. If coaches misinterpreted, forgot, or thought they could get by on a technicality, it's not players fault imo. Too bad we got beat this way. Tough game, and wish we'd made a play somewhere else so it didn't come down to this. It's kinda ridiculous to focus on it, no more than if it'd been an offsides call.

 

[Deus Irae]

Seems pretty clear that the league told the team one thing and then changed it. The question remaining is whether they informed the team of the change.

 

[Koma]

I heard from noted NFL historian Sheldon Richardson that the Patriots always make excuses when they lose. Belichick and Chris Jones must not have received that memo.

 

[Sciz]

After putting a lot of time into researching this rule, my best guess for what happened is simply that Belichick missed the revision of this rule, and I don't even necessarily blame Belichick for it. I just think the NFL botched the education of coaches about this new rule. Everything about this rule originally included that "second level" clause. For example, here's the transcript from the Competition Committee press conference:
http://nfllabor.files.wordpress.com...t-competition-committee-at-annual-meeting.pdf
And the relevant snippets:

You see the second level - the pushers - that's going to be UNR. That'll be a 15-yard penalty for pushing from the second level, so that's something that this rule will prohibit as well.

Yes, the pushing from the second level, pushing the down linemen into the formation is illegal as part of this.

The video about the new rules:
Dean Blandino explains ban on overloading line on kicks - NFL Videos

In the video sent to coaches about the new rule, all of the examples shown were a second level defender pushing a defensive lineman. And then there's that article that has since been changed.

Basically, the only place where it ever really says anything except that only second level blocks are penalties is in the official rulebook, and it seems to me that rather than read the 120 page rulebook, Belichick and company trusted that they would learn all they needed to know from the specific information on the rule changes given to them by the NFL. Apparently that was not correct, as that information was not nearly the same as what the rule is now.

 

[Uncle Rico]

Seems pretty clear that the league told the team one thing and then changed it. The question remaining is whether they informed the team of the change.

I'd love to hear or read transcripts of any discussion between Belichick/the Pats and the league on this. At the very best, sounds to me like the league did a bad job communicating it. Belichick knows better than to go down that road before the media, but I have to think he's letting the league know about it. The video Sciz links to is pretty damning.

All that said, yeah, he should know what the actual rule says. He messed up; he trusted them.

 

[Archeryaddict12]

We have to move on. Even though there was the same penalty committed by the jets, and the league F@&ked up, we can't do anything. Just keep on winning games because cheaters never prosper.

 

[Wheelman]

I was watching Fox football daily. And Mike Pereira was saying the rule that was proposed was with the wording "not on the line scrimmage", but the rule that was adopted didn't have that in there.