If That's Not PI, then What IS?

[Sports Hernia]

Peter King is a moron.

I couldn't agree more!

 

[Sports Hernia]

I gained some respect for Blandino. The facemask non-call was his get out of jail free card and he didn't use it because he didn't think it deserved a flag.

He also said this:

Blandino said the pass interference penalty that one official flagged, only to get overruled by another official, was a “close call that could have went either way.”

According to the rules, "If there is any question whether contact is incidental, the ruling shall be no interference." The call he says they should have made was defensive holding for tugging on the jersey, not PI.

The officials missed three calls on that play against Dallas, defensive holding, DPI as you cannot run thru the receiver to defend, and Diva Bryant coming far onto the field with no helmet to argue with the officials.

If any of those 3 are called properly, odds are Dallas is on the golf course today, and the NFL knows this.

 

[Smellyman]

 

[RichNhansom]

Whats your point? Looks fine to me. In fact that is some damn good coverage right there.

 

[formido]

I gained some respect for Blandino. The facemask non-call was his get out of jail free card and he didn't use it because he didn't think it deserved a flag.

He also said this:

Blandino said the pass interference penalty that one official flagged, only to get overruled by another official, was a “close call that could have went either way.”

According to the rules, "If there is any question whether contact is incidental, the ruling shall be no interference." The call he says they should have made was defensive holding for tugging on the jersey, not PI.

It's fantastic that we have a really clear example now of a defender running into a receiver's body before the ball arrives, and the defender is not playing the ball, and it's not pass interference. This bodes well for Seattle's pass defense and can be used to settle any future claim by opposing fans that Seattle gets away with more than the rules allow. If this is allowed, receivers are screwed.

Hitchens isn't hand fighting, he runs into Pettigrew's shoulder before the ball arrives. That's more the body than the hand. It's more the body than the arm, too, if you want to be lose with hand fighting. It might have looked close in real time, but human bodies trying to catch a ball don't care about looks: 10/10 if a defender hits you before the ball gets there, you ain't making the catch. Pettigrew had absolutely no chance at catching that on target pass because of Hitchen's perfect and legal defense. The "holding" didn't stop that play, since the pass was on target--the closing technique did.

It's strange, though, because I thought even hand fighting without playing the ball was verboten.

(a) Incidental contact by a defender’s hands, arms, or body when both players are competing for the ball, or neither player is looking for the ball. If there is any question whether contact is incidental, the ruling shall be no interference.

http://www.nfl.com/rulebook/passinterference

Now we all agree Hitchens wasn't playing the ball. My prior understanding was that players who face guard are held to a higher standard of contact, meaning they aren't even allowed hand fighting. But Hitchens was both face guarding and went far beyond "incidental" contact.

I'm glad to find, in retrospect, that when Maxwell played Crabtree this exact same way on a pass in SF last year, it was legal. There was a lot of complaining about that non-call in SF circles, and a lot of folks here thought we got away with one. Apparently we did not.

That just emphasizes that when Seattle is rough with receivers, they aren't cheating or getting away with anything special, not even close. You're *allowed* to hit the receiver a little bit before the ball arrives, even if you're not playing the ball. Makes it a lot easier on the defense, thank god. Seattle defenders could probably stand to be even a little more aggressive than they are, it seems.

 

[Scottemojo]

A personal peeve of mine is when a penalty bails out poor offensive execution. that ball was badly underthrown, and PI would have bailed out an awful pass. If the Ref has wussied out an called illegal contact, I would have been fine with that call. But PI? PI assumes a guy would have caught the ball if not interfered with, and assuming that underthrown piece of crap pass would have been caught is way too kind to the offense.

Also, we have seen Seattle recievers get called for offensive PI with a lot less pushing than Pettigrew had.

Mostly, I have a problem with the way they allowed the Dallas line to hold like crazy. I saw Suh get neck hooked, right in front of the official, nothing.

 

[kearly]

A personal peeve of mine is when a penalty bails out poor offensive execution. that ball was badly underthrown, and PI would have bailed out an awful pass. If the Ref has wussied out an called illegal contact, I would have been fine with that call. But PI? PI assumes a guy would have caught the ball if not interfered with, and assuming that underthrown piece of crap pass would have been caught is way too kind to the offense.

The pass would have hit Pettigrew between the numbers, but I get what you are saying. Given how tight the coverage was, and given the size advantage of the target, the situation called for a much higher pass.

As far as demanding a perfect pass for DPI, I remember a call against Browner in the 2013 Colts game where the ball was overthrown by 15 yards, out of bounds, and they still flagged Browner, who barely touched the WR.

In my football watching experience it honestly seems like bad throws generate these flags more often than good throws do. That helps explain why Arians had Lindley throw deep so much. Doesn't make it right, but it is what it is.

 

[kearly]

I gained some respect for Blandino. The facemask non-call was his get out of jail free card and he didn't use it because he didn't think it deserved a flag.

He also said this:

Blandino said the pass interference penalty that one official flagged, only to get overruled by another official, was a “close call that could have went either way.”

According to the rules, "If there is any question whether contact is incidental, the ruling shall be no interference." The call he says they should have made was defensive holding for tugging on the jersey, not PI.

So you read the whole thing and that's what you got out of it? You are like a guided missile of confirmation bias.

As I alluded to before, I respect and mostly agree with what Blandino said, but I do differ in one area. I do not think it was a close call. The LB grabbed Pettigrew's arm, restricting his ability to go for the catch. This is called an "arm bar" and constitutes DPI by itself. The defender then pushed right through Pettigrew without looking for the ball, making contact and not looking back. That is also DPI, and it's not close. He committed DPI not once but twice on the play.

Blandino is under serious fire and as such he is understandably trying to cover his butt. Saying "it could go either way" is basically his sugarcoated way of admitting it. If I were him I would have probably said the exact same thing.

I've heard several people in the media say that a coaches challenge for this kind of situation would have fixed this problem, and I think they are right. The over-riding official said- based on what he saw in a split second- that he thought contact was minimal. I really doubt that opinion would hold up if he was given the luxury of a booth review. The reason the flag was picked up is because you had a bunch of guys trying to reconstruct something they thought they saw in the blink of an eye almost two minutes prior. And the one guy who was wrong happened to be the guy with over-ride authority.

Bill Simmons said on Monday that this was one of the worst calls of all time, and Bill Barnwell was similarly unkind in his day after analysis of the play. I actually don't think it was quite THAT bad, but I do think this play will be remembered, unkindly, decades from now. It will live on in infamy the way the Fail Mary and Tuck Rule have.

Technically the Fail Mary was the right call, but it hasn't been remembered that way. Same with the tuck rule. I think this one is kind of similar, in that the legacy of the call outstrips how bad the call actually was. It was a bad call, but it probably shouldn't be put on an all-time pedestal of bad calls. In that sense, I can sympathize with your position.

 

[hawknation2015]

I gained some respect for Blandino. The facemask non-call was his get out of jail free card and he didn't use it because he didn't think it deserved a flag.

He also said this:

Blandino said the pass interference penalty that one official flagged, only to get overruled by another official, was a “close call that could have went either way.”

According to the rules, "If there is any question whether contact is incidental, the ruling shall be no interference." The call he says they should have made was defensive holding for tugging on the jersey, not PI.

So you read the whole thing and that's what you got out of it? You are like a guided missile of confirmation bias.

It was a "close call that could have gone either way" because when two players are equally interfering with one another, that's not cause for PI. The receiver not only grabs the defender's face mask, he also encircles the defender around his left arm and the back of his helmet before the ball arrives.

Defensive holding would have been the correct call because of the jersey tug while the receiver is running his route. DPI was probably not the correct call here.