Nfl Regular season thread ( week 5 )

[mooby]

Originally Posted by Ruhskins

Did anyone catch this by the way? Talk about hitting a low point for the Cowpukes...which is great

From Matt Mosley:

Right tackles shouldn't go to the ground during TD celebrations: The Cowboys tied the score at 27 on a touchdown pass to Jason Witten in the fourth quarter. The tight end flipped the ball to right tackle Marc Colombo to let him spike the ball. The two of them then did a leaping chest-bump, which led to Colombo landing on his backside. According to an NFL rule, a player cannot go to the ground during a touchdown celebration. And I guess poor coordination isn't a plausible defense. The 15-yard penalty meant that kicker David Buehler couldn't get a touchback, which contributed to Marc Mariani's 73-yard return. The Titans quickly scored to make it 34-27.

I haven't seen the video, so I can't say with certainty I know what happened, but it sounds like (from Matt Mosley's writeup) Colombo fell to the ground during the touchdown celebration and got penalized for it.

Ordinarily I would never try to defend the Cowboys on anything, especially on something that contributed to their demise, but that's just another case of the NFL being overzealous about the rules at all times. If a guy falls to the ground during a touchdown celebration unintentionally it shouldn't be a penalty, it should only be a penalty if it's intentional.

Same thing with Megatron's catch in week 1 against the Bears. I can see why the officials didn't rule it a catch because according to the definition in the rulebook, that wasn't a catch. But he cleanly caught it and had possession in the end zone, and it wasn't like the ball fell out of his hands, he just put it on the ground and got up. But as soon as possession was established in the end zone it should've been ruled a catch. I hope they amend that rule in the offseason because that was obviously a game changing moment and it was negated because everybody is too concerned with rules. I'm not trying to make it sound like rules aren't important and shouldn't be followed, but if they are going to be so proactive on enforcing a shallow rule like that, then they need to be proactive and call every broken rule on every play. You're gonna penalize a guy for unintentionally falling to the ground during a celebration but you won't penalize a tackle for wrapping his arm around a defenders neck to prevent him from sacking the qb?

/rant over.