Should roughing the passer be reviewable? It reportedly could be considered in the NFL
Nearly every week in the NFL there is at least one roughing-the-passer penalty called that infuriates fans.
On Sunday night, Miami’s Jaelen Phillips was flagged for a sack of Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert that didn’t appear to be egregious.
A week earlier, now former Chiefs defensive tackle Taylor Stallworth was penalized for this sack of the Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.
CBS Sports’ Tony Romo wasn’t so sure that should have been a penalty.
The worst case of a questionable roughing call may have happened in October when the Chiefs’ Chris Jones strip-sacked Raiders quarterback Derek Carr. In that game, ESPN’s Troy Aikman thought the officials got it wrong.
There could be hope for the Chiefs and other teams who have roughing calls go against them.
Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio wrote that a source said “there will be an offseason push to make roughing the passer calls subject to replay review.”
Here is an excerpt from Florio’s story, which was published Monday: “The league has pushed back against the possibility of taking replay back to the realm of the quasi-subjective, citing its horrendous failure to properly handle replay review of pass interference calls and non-calls in 2019 as the justification for it.
“But the fact that the league bungled replay review of pass interference should never be a shield against any expectation that it properly implement replay review of other calls.”
The NFL rulebook says a roughing call is the judgment of the referee.
“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,” the rulebook states. “Instead, the defensive player must strive to wrap up the passer with the defensive player’s arms and not land on the passer with all or most of his body weight.”
That’s the part of the rule that seems to cause the most head-scratching.
Former Colts punter turned ESPN broadcaster Pat McAfee advocated for a review of roughing penalties in certain situations.
“If the ‘roughing the passer’ call is on a failed 3rd down before an obvious punt situation.. it should be reviewable,” McAfee wrote. “It’s effectively and actually a turnover.. all turnovers are reviewed. Boom.. we got a piece of it figured out.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2022 at 10:52 AM.
