Roughing the Passer Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Ray Lewis is complaining about roughing the passer calls on Tom Brady which happened last Sunday. I dislike the Ravens, especially Ray Lewis, but I have to agree with him. I only saw one of the two plays (I went to see the Providence Bruins open up against the Springfield Falcons so I missed everything after the Raven got hurt) and when the flag was thrown, I objected. A Raven accidenctally brushed Brady's helmet, Brady fell down, a flag was thrown. It was a terrible call.

There's an article in yesterday's Boston Herald about it. Lewis is quoting as saying "People work too hard for that. And the embarrassing part about it is you see it constantly every week- emphasis on protecting the quarterback... It's embarrassing fo us to even keep a game going like that, give them momentum after they go three-and-out. We stop them, see a flag for a personal foul and Brady's laughing? That ain't no personal foul if you're still smiling...Did it lose the game? Absolutely not, but it's just embarrassing to go in there and play a game the way we did and you get that."

I agree with Ray Lewis about something having to do with football, and that makes me want to throw up.

I understand that it gets called both ways and will even out over the course of the season. In week 1, I complained about 2 terrible roughing the passer calls against New England. One could argue it's even now, but I still don't like it. The Herald had this quote from Brady, "(Quarterbacks are) holding the ball, we're unprotected. We're sitting back there defenseless. They deserved to get those calls..."

This is complete crap. The QB has at least 5 linemen to block for him. Many times there are tight ends and backs which stay in pass protection too. In those cases, more than half the offense is devoted to protecting the QB.

(In case you are wondering, disagreeing with Brady about football is fine in my mind. If I were disagreeing with Bledsoe, then I'd want to throw up.)

Ray Lewis had another quote in the Herald, which I think was probably either a joke or else said in frustration and wasn't meant to be taken literally "That's not football and that's the embarrassing part about it... You can't stop drives like that, you can't throw flags and say 'Oh, you touched the quarterback.' Put flags on them, put a red buzzer on them, so if we touch them, they're down."

Like I said, I don't think he literally meant the part about flags and buzzers, but it's where we are heading. I'm told the Patriots got screwed in 1976 against the Raiders in the playoffs on a bogus Roughing the Passer call against Sugar Bear Hamilton. I only know about this because it was the standard comeback to any Raider fan who complained about the tuck rule.

I've seen this "terrible" roughing the passer call, and by today's standards, it was blatent. Hamilton probably would be fined on top of the penalty. Do Google searches about it, and it's on a few "Worst call ever" lists. If you get to the ref's wikipedia page, you'll see this was the most contreversial call he ever made. It was so bad, apparently the NFL wouldn't let him ref Patriot games anymore.

In light of this, I wonder where we'll be in 33 years. Will these hits on Brady look terrible to my children? If I show them a tape, will they be up screaming about what a dirty team the Ravens must have been?