The Miami Dolphins are winless, which isn’t good, but it gets worse because they also don’t have a sack this season, making them the NFL’s only team bearing that stigma. And all that made Sunday’s controversial call sting all the more.
The Dolphins today are going to dissect the fact they thought edge rusher Chop Robinson hurried Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes to throw the football out of the end zone for a big fourth-quarter stop.
The ball fell harmlessly incomplete.
The way Mahomes fell was much more harmful in the view of the officials, who promptly called Robinson for roughing the passer.
And why did Robinson get called for the controversial penalty? Because he landed on Mahomes without somehow sufficiently showing that he was trying to avoid stuffing the great quarterback into the Hard Rock Stadium grass.
Remember that word – stuffing – because, believe it or not, it’s an actual NFL rulebook standard for calling roughing the passer.
(But first, full transparency: This penalty didn’t change the outcome of the game. It didn’t really affect the Chiefs at all because there was another Dolphins penalty on the play that would have extended the possession anyway.)
But this penalty speaks to what lengths the NFL is going to protect its quarterbacks., how much latitude flawed officials get in making a call, and to what degree defenders are supposed go to avoid hurting QBs.
That degree perhaps includes floating in air. Maybe levitating for a beat or two.
Or simply defying gravity.
Robinson didn’t do any of those. He hit Mahomes and the quarterback went down.
“No, he got me,” Mahomes said afterward. “He got me for sure pretty good. But that’s part of playing football.”
Part of playing football is requiring pass rushers to somehow tackle the quarterback but “not unnecessarily or violently throw him down or land on top of him with all or most of the [defender’s] weight,” per the NFL rules book.
And here’s the problem 1: It’s in the official’s sole judgment if the defensive player did his best to not land with full weight on the quarterback.
Problem 2: Defenders cannot typically hit the quarterback square and then stop their progress while in mid air.
“Those are tough, man. Those are tough,” Dolphins linebacker Jordyn Brooks said. “… I personally don’t think that Chop was wrong in anything he did, and so that’s something that we can’t control.”
It’s understandable the Dolphins cannot control this because neither can anyone else. It’s physically impossible for a 280-pound dude to stop falling once he’s in the air. He also cannot change the trajectory of his fall so as to avoid the guy he just hit.
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The only way coaches have figured out to coach this is for rushers to try to cushion their fall with their arms and hands. You know, act like they didn’t fall as hard as gravity demanded.
That’s what this call left Robinson thinking about – how to put his hands out with such drama as to allay the referee’s fear that the face of the NFL was on the ground.
“Put my hands out earlier,” Robinson told reporters at his locker stall after the game. “I did what I was taught to do…”
What makes this so difficult is the rule itself.
NFL Rule 12, Section 2, Article 11 defines roughing the passer, and protecting any player in a passing posture from unnecessary, late, or violent contact.
It states:
“The Referee has principal responsibility for enforcing these rules. Any physical acts against a player who is in a passing posture (i.e. before, during, or after a pass) which, in the Referee’s judgment, are unwarranted by the circumstances of the play will be called as fouls.”
So, yes, this is all “the referee’s judgment.”
And then the weight-bearing problem that brings the stuffing action into play…
“A rushing defender is prohibited from committing such intimidating and punishing acts as ‘stuffing’ a passer into the ground or unnecessarily wrestling or driving him down after the passer has thrown the ball,” the rule reads.
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“When tackling a passer who is in a defenseless posture (e.g., during or just after throwing a pass), a defensive player must not unnecessarily or violently throw him down or land on top of him with all or most of the defender’s weight.
“Instead, the defensive player must strive to fall to the side of the quarterback’s body, or to brace his fall with his arms to avoid landing on the quarterback with all or most of his body weight.”
Robinson braced his fall with his arm. But apparently the referee weighed the defender’s fall and decided he followed through with all or most of his body weight.
Or maybe it’s just an faulty rule that needs more work.
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