NFL Star Erupts: 'League's Going in a Direction I Think a Lot of People Don't Like'
Remember when football was a hard-hitting game, a war in the trenches, a source of glorious controlled violence and the ultimate expression of angry catharsis on Sundays before getting back to the grind of civilized life and work on Monday morning?
Well, those days are long over, and Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews isn’t shy about saying so.
Matthews has been racking up roughing-the-passer penalties, three of them this season so far in fact, for the unforgivable crime of lowering his shoulder and cleanly tackling a quarterback. And this is one flag that nobody is going to stand for at an NFL game.
The hit Matthews was flagged for in Week 1 was a no-brainer call for the refs as the Packers linebacker hit Chicago’s Mitchell Trubisky well after the throw.
But in each of the past two games, Matthews was flagged for sacking a quarterback with what many football analysts have claimed is text-book form for how to tackle. If those are illegal hits, it has many people — Matthews included — left unsure how to actually tackle in a legal manner.
“Unfortunately this league’s going in a direction I think a lot of people don’t like,” Matthews said after Sunday’s game, which the Packers lost 31-17 to Washington. “I think they’re getting soft. The only thing hard about this league is the fines they levy down on guys like me who play the game hard.”
The league’s reaction was swift and decisive in defense of its million-dollar glory boys.
This is a foul for roughing the passer – the defender lands “with all or most of the defender’s weight” on the passer. Rule 12, Section 2, Article 9(b): https://t.co/s9YKN8NLuT #GBvsWAS pic.twitter.com/ei2QZkvvzx
— NFL Football Operations (@NFLFootballOps) September 23, 2018
“The defender lands with all or most of his weight on the passer,” the league said in explaining the crux of Matthews’ violation.
Excuse me, but yeah, no (expletive), he tackled the guy. Do the laws of physics no longer apply here?
The rule in question, Rule 12, Section 2, Article 9(b), just outlawed one of the most basic plays in football in an effort to, essentially, ensure that no quarterback ever gets touched without someone getting whistled for a 15-yard penalty and an automatic first down.
This new “be gentle” policy led to two enterprising Twitter users providing a helpful primer on how to get a quarterback into the sack …er, sack the quarterback.
How to sack a QB in the NFL now. 🤣 (via @seanmickeyG14) pic.twitter.com/vdqHTusfRf
— House of Highlights (@HoHighlights) September 24, 2018
Matthews pointed out the absurdity of the rule in simple terms of where one is expected to land on a sack if not on the quarterback.
“Obviously when you’re tackling a guy from the front you’re gonna land on him,” Matthews said of the hit on Redskins quarterback Alex Smith. “I understand the spirit of the rule, I said that weeks prior. But when you have a hit like that, that’s a football play.
“I even went up to Alex Smith after the game, asked him, ‘What do you think? What can I do differently?’ Because that’s a football play.”
On the bright side, the NHL returns on Oct. 3, so sports fans who like their sports with more contact and less idiotic rule changes to put a pacifier in quarterbacks’ mouths will have something else to watch on Sundays if they so choose.
And if you prefer non-contact sports that are actually supposed to be non-contact sports, baseball’s got the playoffs, and the NBA is back Oct. 16. There’s even soccer all over the world if that’s your jam.
The NFL is throwing away the very essence of what makes it a unique sports spectacle, and it’s just another in a long line of wars declared against its own fans in what’s looking more and more like a science experiment to answer the question “how much would it take to finally dethrone pro football as America’s most popular sport?”
Meanwhile, we can watch Matthews chase glory, setting an unbreakable record for most penalties drawn on clean hits in NFL history.
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