Bad as roughing the passer calls were, volume of complaints show NFL's power | Opinion
Major League Baseball is in the midst of its playoffs and the NWSL and Major League Soccer are about to start theirs. The NHL's regular season has begun while the NBA kicks off next week. And here we are obsessing over a play that, in the grand scheme of things, had no bearing on the outcome of a game.
It is good to be the NFL.
Don’t get me wrong. The roughing the passer call on Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones in Monday night’s game against the Las Vegas Raiders was a joke. Just as penalizing Atlanta Falcons defensive tackle Grady Jarrett for his textbook takedown of Tom Brady the day before was a joke.
Are we just going to ignore that Jones had possession of the ball and tried to brace his arms before landing on Raiders quarterback Derek Carr? Or should the 325-pound Jones also be able to defy gravity? Are Jarrett and other defensive linemen supposed to pull up short and ask, 'pretty please,' if they can tackle the quarterback before they do so? Or are the kid gloves reserved for Brady?
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“I understand protecting the quarterback – that’s important. It is important,” Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid after his team rallied for a 30-29 win over the Raiders. “Sometimes there’s a point where you got to let guys play, and we just got to find where that happy medium is.”
Or … not.
Oh, the NFL is already somberly expressing its concern and has put the matter on the agenda for next week’s owners meeting. But you know darn well that the suits at NFL headquarters really don’t mind all the uproar.
Why? Because it means we’re talking about the NFL. Still. Constantly. To the exclusion, or at least overshadowing, of everything else.
The NFL has games three days a week, for six months out of the year. Yet you would be hard-pressed to find any day of the year when the league isn’t commanding attention for something.
During the off-season, it’s all the personnel moves and the hopes -- or if you’re a Detroit Lions fan, despair – they bring for the coming season. Once games begin, it’s spectacular plays or appallingly bad ones. Grumbling over referees. Terrific games or absolute dogs.
“Power of the NFL: millions of people complain about the quality of a game while … still watching it,” former Green Bay Packers executive Andrew Brandt said on Twitter during that abysmal Sunday night game between the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos on Sept. 25.
(Which now looks like an instant classic compared to the field goal-a-palooza in Denver’s loss to the Indianapolis Colts last Thursday. And now we get the Broncos on Monday Night Football next week. What did we do to deserve this?)
For those who worry that the inconsistency and inanity of the roughing the passer calls will somehow damage the game, or cause people to stop watching, please. The NFL has been down this road before.
Remember all the outrage over that no-call on pass interference that robbed the New Orleans Saints of a trip to the Super Bowl in 2019? The NFL took it seriously enough that it made PI calls reviewable the following season.
And after that one season, the league reversed course and no one squawked. Because, as it turned out, no one besides Saints fans really cared. We just like yelling about the NFL. Or cheering the NFL. Or debating whether we’re happy with or mad at the NFL.
In other words, we just like talking about the NFL.
Last week it was how the NFL had failed Tua Tagovailoa, this week it’s the roughing the passer calls and next week it’ll be something else. Always it will be something else.
Good, bad or indifferent, the NFL is not only our national pastime, it’s our national conversation.
Follow Paste BN Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.