With another slate of great games finishing up this week, the NFL officiating crew has made sure to embarrass themselves yet again in the biggest of games. Week one of the 2019-2020 playoffs started with two great games involving the Bills v. Texans as well as the Patriots v. the Titans I was getting really excited for my team, the Philadelphia Eagles to get ready to upset the Seattle Seahawks.
Carson Wentz was at hot as any QB in the league the past month; doing so with the likes of Boston Scott, Greg Ward and Josh Perkins. He was raising the game of everyone else around him and putting the city on his back while silencing the critics along the way. His numbers the last month of the season were MVP caliber, reminiscent of his 2017 season where it was a foregone conclusion he had the MVP in the bag.
His month of December looked like this: 10 TD, 1,536 yards and 66.2% completion.
The purpose of this article, though, isn’t to show how incredible of a quarterback that Wentz is, but rather that NFL officiating has a big problem on their hands. With Wentz riding the aforementioned hot streak, a win against Seattle, who finished 1-3 to end their season, seemed quite likely. Then Jadeveon Clowney decided to continue his career of dirty play with intent to injure an opposing player:
Carson Wentz went to the locker room after taking this hit from Jadeveon Clowney #SEAvsPHI pic.twitter.com/gdwK1UXCn0
— Kevin Boilard (@KevinBoilard) January 5, 2020
Not only did the officiating crew not throw Clowney out of the game for a helmet to helmet hit on a QB giving himself up, but a flag was not even thrown. The NFL referee official twitter account is quoted as saying: “Carson Wentz was a runner and he did not give himself up. We saw incidental helmet contact, and in our judgment, we didn’t rule that to be a foul.” – Referee Shawn Smith.” How a hit can be considered incidental when he lowered the crown of his helmet into Carsons’ simply makes no sense to me, nor should it to any rational fan. This call was quite confusing to me as week 2 of this season, only a few months ago Wentz against the Atlanta Falcons dove for a 2-point conversion late in the game and got into the end zone, but was deemed down at the 1 because when he dove, he “gave himself up”.
Even just yesterday in the Baltimore game, Lamar Jackson was hit in the head late and, again, there was no call on the field with little explanation as to why. A defensive player will be penalized for touching a quarterback’s helmet, driving them into the ground with their body weight or even a legal hit that is deemed to be on a defenseless receiver, but just in the past two weeks we see these two hits with no call.
Maybe we do have some of the worst fans in the league, but I can promise we will hold everyone accountable where it needs to be. The NFL has placed an emphasis on the protection of quarterbacks, and all players in the league against head injuries, but the hypocrisy we have seen this season is nothing short of mind boggling and something clearly needs to be done about it.
Maybe Stephen A. won’t call Clowney a dirty player, but I sure as hell will.
