Thespians x Football

What has come about since the advent of the player safety initiative.

One of the prevailing themes in football is the idea of toughness. The idea that one play you could get punched in the mouth, blasted in the rib cage, or punished for not protecting yourself. It’s a part of the game that has been inseparable to those who have played it. You play through injuries especially as the season approaches its end in the postseason and accomplish unfathomable feats in doing so. Look at Patrick Mahomes in Super Bowl 57. He could barely walk with an ankle sprain heading into halftime to then revive himself with some kind of miracle drug in the locker room that allowed him to come back and take home the Super Bowl trophy. Or Ronnie Lott deciding to amputate his pinky finger in order to continue playing safety for the 49ers, forgoing reconstructive surgery that would sideline him for far longer than the amputation. As the game has changed and evolved in certain aspects it has also regressed in the toughness department. This is in large part due to the effect officiating has had on the game itself. What started out as an initiative to protect the NFL’s players has been abused as a loophole to gain a somewhat unfair advantage in games. 

So what’s the deal here? What I’m getting at is how impossible the league has made it for most teams to just play defense. No better example when talking about this phenomenon than mentioning the Mahomes way. This way is routinely throwing his head back whenever he gets hit simulating to the ref that he got shot or when scampering with the football intentionally sliding late, egregiously embellishing the mildest of mild contact while doing so. Against the Texans it was downright silly the two penalties he got in the contest. The first was allocated to Houston Texans edge rusher Will Anderson. While running at him full speed with his arms up to disrupt Mahomes throw on 3rd and 9 he barely grazes Mahomes helmet. Mahomes then whips his head back, scans the area for the nearest official, and immediately gets the nearest ref to launch his flag, extending an unfruitful drive into one that yielded a field goal. This penalty resulted in the Chiefs chewing a substantial portion of the clock afterwards. This issue came about later in the game as well when two Texans players collided helmet to helmet while Mahomes slid extremely late. He whipped his head back and was granted yet another 15 yards on a clear cut no call. It was so bad that Troy Aikman in the booth had something to say about it which isn’t common for commentators to do. The final straw though came later in the match for Aikman and every eye ball viewing the contest. Mahomes scrambles out of the pocket and decides to muddle his feet next to the sideline to allow the defense to hit him in the back. Once he gets contacted he throws his arms up and belly flops out of bounds in an attempt to get a call. It was seriously the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen from a player considered to be the face of a major sports league. The commentating booth had seen enough and heading into the AFC Championship all eyes were on the officiating of the contest. This wasn’t the goal of the player safety initiative, gaining freebies off of flops and doing so unapologetically.

The irony of this thought is that “protecting players” has found a way to damage the integrity of the game with subjective calls. Somehow in every single close contest this season the Chiefs have gotten some diabolical calls to go their way seemingly every time the game comes down to a crucial juncture. This past week in the AFC Championship there were some garbage calls in the game that made little to no sense. Xavier Worthy’s “catch” that many saw as an interception or an incomplete pass, Josh Allen getting marked short on a 4th down run where he clearly got to the sticks, and lastly Travis Kelce being chippy with Buffalo after Mahomes’ TD run in the second quarter to then flop and get an automatic penalty call. All were instances that got called into question. The Chiefs are not the only team to do this as it has become commonplace among the top teams in the league. 

In the Commanders vs Eagles game a similar occurrence to Kelce’s flop happened when AJ Brown and Marshon Lattimore ripped each other's helmets off, but Brown just put his arms up and pleaded his innocence to avoid the flag, while Lattimore got the penalty (The play oddly helped the Commanders though). In back to back weeks the Eagles have capitalized on officiating with third down runs to Saquon Barkley using the boundary to his advantage as the Eagles sat on the edge of field goal range in both instances. In the NFC Championship he glided out of bounds a hair before getting blasted by Mike Sainristil to trigger an automatic flag, which is something he also did the week before against the Rams. What’s to stop players from abusing that move? Defensive guys are taught to punish players going out of bounds, but playing your cards right and stepping out of bounds a millisecond before taking the blow triggers a game-altering 15 yard swing to extend drives and affect the outcome of games. Jalen Hurts is the king of late slides as well making it very hard to time up hits on him because there’s too much risk associated with the little reward gained from putting a hit on him. You simply aren’t allowed to hit the quarterback like you used to be in the NFL. At least when talking about the upper echelon of QBs. The Jared Goff’s or young rooks in the NFL can get dealt much more punishment without having the striped crew on their side.   

That’s the current issue the NFL has run into. The league doesn’t even hide preferential treatment for certain players. There’s mic’d up game footage of Mahomes going down and yelling, “That’s a hold!,” to immediately be awarded a penalty flag on the defense. The prevailing narrative heading into Super Bowl weekend has been the constant subjective calls the Chiefs have received heading into the big game. Mahomes hasn’t really been all that impressive this season, but the NFL will continue to put out graphics on Mahomes’ and Kelce’s greatness. The headlines will exclaim the two as the best duo in NFL history in the playoffs, praising Mahomes in any way possible, yet they might be one of the ugliest looking 17-2 teams we will ever see. Their defense is nothing to look past, but offensively it’s checkdown after checkdown with penalties often dictating drive success. The league better tread lightly in this last contest because if there’s any questionable occurrences in this Super Bowl Mahomes’ legacy could be tarnished or at the very least called into question. Tom Brady did have some instances where he got a call or two, but the scale of the Chiefs calls at the most crucial points in a contest is just outrageous. Phantom holding penalties and much more have become easy ways to extend Chiefs drives and give them more opportunities to get in the endzone and support the narrative of Mahomes’ greatness. The role penalties play in contests has become a serious issue to the die hard fan. I don’t speak for all, but fans might want change as to how the rules are enforced.

The player safety rules need to be more concrete and hopefully will get addressed this offseason. For roughing the passer calls the league should establish the rule of forcible contact to the side or front of the head is a penalty and that incidental NON FORCIBLE contact when rushing the passer is not penalized (unless it’s to the facemask). Also the landing on the quarterback with body weight dilemma should be if the quarterback is head on and the defender belly flops on the quarterback, not when a player accidentally falls on the quarterback due to how he wrapped him up. The NFL also should eliminate or significantly alter the slide, maybe adding a player signal to initiate a slide and kill the play at that spot. With the issue of sideline contact a player should be live unless he clearly makes an effort to get out of bounds. Maybe a one second delay for one foot out of bounds should come into play when players step out of bounds at the last second to give the defender slight leeway when going full speed. No one really enjoys when these player safety rules get exploited like they have been and change is necessary with it so the game doesn’t become redundant penalty fests time and time again. 

The sheer volume of crucial game changing penalties since the introduction of the player safety initiative is wild and to circle back to the beginning of this writing some teams escape it entirely. When Daniel Sorenson, former KC Chiefs safety, speared Browns receiver Rashard Higgins on the goalline to force a fumble in a crucial juncture during the Chiefs vs Browns playoff contest back in 2021, there was no penalty called although it was clear as day a penalty for targeting or spearing. The play had astronomically large implications on the outcome of the game and it happened directly in front of an official. Make the rules uniform for every single team, don’t allow flopping by implementing penalties for players that obviously flop, and clearly define all penalties to act as they were intended to when the league implemented them. That is my plea to the NFL moving forward.

Here’s a tidbit: (Troy Aikman critiquing Mahomes has nothing to do with jealousy)

The era Troy Aikman played in was a time the position had a genuine fear of getting massacred on the football field. If Troy Aikman ever found himself in a vulnerable position at quarterback he could have his head ripped off with a club or have a defensive tackle with the force of 300+ pounds of body weight land on him. At this point the notion of even putting a singular formidable hit on Mahomes would likely trigger a penalty for unnecessary roughness in today’s game. There’s no comparison as to who had the tougher era in terms of physicality out of the two. This allows Aikman to view it more accurately for what it is than an average football fan. He’s been on one of the best teams to ever do it when he was with Dallas in the ’90s winning three Super Bowls in four years, so when he sees a QB flopping or bending the player safety rules he’ll offer an extremely candid opinion on the matter. Thank you Troy Aikman for telling us fans how it is every single week, never hesitating to offer the insight EVERY DAMN FOOTBALL FAN wants to hear!!!! Seriously though Troy Aikman has not sugar coated anything this year and the fans love how authentic he is in the booth. Bravo.