Plainly even the NFL may be getting uninterested in the controversy surrounding late hits on quarterback slides.
Based on a report from ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Saturday, the NFL is expected to expand its replay assist usage within the offseason, and that it might prolong to getting assistance on calls concerning late hits on sliding quarterbacks.
The league has come underneath fireplace this season for borderline calls on quarterbacks that slide late on their runs, with final Saturday’s AFC divisional sport between the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs and Houston Texans offering probably the most fodder for the dialogue.
The Texans had been penalized twice for hits on Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes that angered followers and ESPN announcer Troy Aikman. Probably the most egregious of these calls got here when Mahomes was scrambling, didn’t initially slide after which took a last-second drop to the bottom as two Texans defenders converged on him. Each defenders made minimal contact with Mahomes and largely collided with themselves.
The Texans had been penalized on a play that helped preserve a Chiefs drive alive.
As the decision was being made by the official, Aikman ranted about how the league needed to do one thing in regards to the rule and people calls.
Over the previous couple of years, replay help has been used to right clear and apparent errors, resembling recognizing the ball and whether or not or not a play is a catch. This season it was added for parts that included a penalty flag being thrown on the play, together with hits out of bounds, hits to the pinnacle and parts of intentional grounding.
On one hand, there ought to be a priority about including much more replay into the league when it already extends sport instances and doesn’t all the time get issues proper. Not all the pieces must be up for evaluate. Particularly issues which might be subjective. However the NFL additionally has to do one thing about a few of the calls which might be impacting video games and the advantages quarterbacks preserve getting.
It’s comprehensible why the NFL desires to guard quarterbacks. They’re the celebrities of the league, the highest-paid gamers, the largest money-makers, and the gamers that almost all influence the sport and the league as a complete. However they shouldn’t be given unfair benefits that it make not possible to deal with and defend them. That has began to occur with the way in which they’re handled on slides and a few late-hit calls.
