Apply The Rules Evenly…Or Something

I waited a week and a half before writing this just so it doesn’t appear I just have sour grapes over the Ravens loss in New England but certain aspects of officiating in the NFL have bothered me for a long time.

Whether we like them or not the rules protecting the quarterbacks are here to stay. My problems are not so much with the rules, but the application of the rules. It seems to me that penalties for roughing the passer are far more likely to be called if there is a marquee quarterback. Do you really think the Suggs roughing the passer call against Brady would have been called against Matthew Stafford? I bet the ref would have ignored Stafford if he turned and made the flag throwing gesture that Brady made. If the rules are going to be in the books, they should be applied equally for all quarterbacks, not just the star quarterbacks. The star players are already better than most other players; they don’t need special rules making them even better.

The same goes for pass interference rules. It seems to me that a great receiver gets the benefit of pass interference calls far more than an average one. That’s not fair, if a player is interfered with, there should be a call no matter the contract or stats of the players involved.

Even worse, how often is Todd Heap interfered with and the announcers often justify it by saying that they don’t normally call that on passes to a tight end. Oh, so because of his position the rules in the book don’t apply. Yeah, that makes sense.

There are probably other rules that are applied unevenly as well. All I ask is that the rules are applied equally no matter the players involved. I think that would help the game a considerable degree.

After that maybe the refs can focus on spotting a ball correctly on a play that ended right in front of them. Baby steps.

This entry was written by ExtremeRavens member Spen.