An NFL quarterback tries to squeeze a pass into a wide receiver running down the middle of the field. That receiver makes a catch but, as he does, a safety comes up and absolutely destroys him with a hard hit. The receiver gets knocked backwards and a flag flies. Unnecessary roughness on the safety? NOPE. In Jon Beason's world, it's a penalty on the quarterback for making a dangerous throw and putting his receiver in harm's way.
OK, OK. So this is never going to happen. If you haven't noticed, the NFL pretty clearly favors offensive players at all times. But Beason, a linebacker for the Giants, just suggested that it should happen. In his eyes, quarterbacks are the ones who put their receivers into bad spots at times, so why shouldn't they be the ones who get flagged for it?
"In my opinion, I think they should flag the quarterbacks for throwing the ball there," Beason said earlier this week. "Back in the day, certain routes in certain coverages said I could not throw this seam route because it's cover-4, safety's sitting right on top of there, I don't want to get my guy killed…Now you throw the ball, guys get hit, they may be hurt, maybe not. You roll around, the flag comes out. Well, it's a good play for the offense…So you play to the rules. I think the onus should be on the quarterback not to throw those balls. Then we wouldn't have those collisions."
Beason's idea is interesting. But c'mon. Can you imagine a ref throwing a flag on Aaron Rodgers for trying to stick a throw into Randall Cobb? Or better yet, can you imagine refs huddling up and trying to figure out whether Tim Tebow meant to throw such a bad pass? No way. But this might make one or two refs think twice before throwing a flag on a defender simply because a receiver is writhing around on the ground in pain. So…mission accomplished on Beason's part?
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[via Eye on Football]
