Author Topic: NFL Penalty Enforcement Philosophy  (Read 1717 times)

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Offline refjimb

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NFL Penalty Enforcement Philosophy
« on: September 20, 2018, 10:15:47 AM »
As an official I find myself defending the reasoning behind a lot of the rules to my non-official friends when watching games.  But, I started to question a couple of things the NFL does differently and wonder if they shouldn't consider a change because I think many times it's not so much that an official gets the call wrong, it's that in the NFL the enforcement of certain fouls can really swing a game. 

For example:

Watching Browns/Saints last week (am a Browns fan) and for 58 minutes of football the only time the Saints really moved the ball was on a 40 yard DPI call in the Endzone, and then late in the game on an Illegal Contact call on a 3rd and 15 when the was got sacked.  The IC call of course gave the Saints an automatic First Down and they went on to score their first TD.  This penalty in particular seems really punitive.  The call was definitely questionable, but it wouldn't be a huge deal if this was 5 yards and replay the down, or even 10 yards.  The spot foul on DPI is tough too because it's clear some teams just strategize to take advantage of this for huge gains when they have more physical receivers.

The NFL is the only league I watch purely from a fan perspective, and I know a lot of enforcements like these were implemented to increase scoring, but now it seems like these calls really draw the fans ire because of how much they can impact the game.