Mike Zimmer said on KFAN's "X's and O's" that safety Andrew Sendejo was told by an official at Green Bay that he was flagged for unnecessary roughness even though his form and delivery was correct by rules standards. "He (Sendejo) said, ‘What could I have done different?'" Zimmer said on KFAN. "He (the official) said ‘You did everything right. You couldn't have done anything different. They just want us to throw the flag.'" Zimmer said he placed a call to the league office to review the incident. Video replay of the hit shows Sendejo appearing to lead with his right shoulder on an open field tackle of Devante Adams after cornerback Xavier Rhodes had made initial contact with the receiver. (h/t ESPN) -------- First of all, I don't think that play was as clean as the referee apparently made it out to be. You can't go helmet to helmet with a guy who is already in the process of being tackled. While the hit itself is pretty irrelevant to the ridiculousness of the conversation that took place after it, that type of tackle, unlike many others, has been well-outlined as illegal. Now, I understand why some might find it surprising that a full time official in the preeminent professional football league in the world would all but give a praiseful pat on the ass to a player while in the act of bending down to pick up the penalty flag that he has just thrown against him. It should be a bit shocking that the foremost authority on what's right and what's wrong openly admitted that the thing that was once the most right is now, by vague rule, wrong. Unfortunately, I personally can't say that it is. You can make a good argument that this alleged interaction is an indictment of the NFL's decision to ease tackling out of tackle football to look as though, upon the arrival of a billion dollar lawsuit, they all the sudden care about the extent of the head injuries that occur during their sport. However, in my opinion, this is just more evidence to the already existing charge that the league is using up all the White-Out in trying to retroactively course correct. A referee being forthright in saying that his job is to basically make sure every collision between freakishly athletic men moving at full speed that might look dangerous be disciplined by way of 15 yards puts quite the exclamation point on his employer's ineptitude. However, I envy the blissful ignorance of anyone that thought the NFL was doing anything other than shifting the burden of blame to both the players and the officials in trying to make their game safer by way of winging it.
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