The NFL was outraged when a Commanders player was called for a penalty on what looked like a simple sack for Patriots’ Mac Jones.
The Washington Commanders got hit hard by a roughing passer penalty against the Patriots of New England on Sunday. The whole NFL was confused by the call.
The Patriots’ Mac Jones got the ball and sat back down to throw. The Commanders’ K.J. Henry came within the edge and sacked Jones before he was able to get the ball out. Jones thought it was his first sack for his career.
“I don’t see the call,” FOX analyst Jonathan Vilma said to be the video of the contentious play was shown. “Mac Jones possesses the ball within his hands, and then he takes them down to get the sack.”
Even though the Commanders were down seven points in the second half, they came back to beat the Patriots 20–17. This was partly due to a very iffy penalty call by judge Adrian Hill.
The Commanders’ K.J. Henry knocked Patriots quarterback Mac Jones in a third-down play within the third quarter, which would have led to a likely punt.
However, referee Adrian Hill flagged Henry for roughing Jones, even though the hit was pretty normal.
Jones fell to the ground after Henry hit him from behind. Henry then climbed up Jones’ body as well as onto the field.
He then kicked a field goal, which made the score 17–10. The Washington Post’s Nicki Jhabvala asked Hill about what he saw in the play. In the pool.
He said, “I was the calling official, as well as I was roughing the passer because of his whole body weight.” “The judge on the field said that the defender hit the player hard, chest-to-chest.”
When he came in, he didn’t do a gator move or a clear on his side to get rid of the majority of that body weight. His force hit the person right on the head, so the category had been full body weight.
The rookie defensive end for the Washington Commanders came off the line clean and had his sights set on New England Patriots qb Mac Jones. Jones kept looking around the field because he wasn’t feeling Henry at all.
Henry is the latest player to be called for a roughing penalty that didn’t happen. Before he became Fox Sports’ main rules analyst, Dean Blandino was the NFL’s vice president of officiating. He said during the show that it was a bad call.
Most of the time, Blandino doesn’t attack references within his analysis, but this one was so bad that he didn’t hold back and called it what it was.
To answer the first question regarding where Henry could have done better, there is nothing. He could ask Grady Jarrett, a defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons, for help.
Tom Brady, who used to play quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, was famously given a phantom cutting the passer flag by Jarrett.
A very rare event did happen on the afternoon of Sunday in Foxboro: the referee made a call that was so bad that everyone in the world agreed it was wrong.
The first play of the second portion of the Patriots vs. Commanders game had that happen. Jones was sacked behind the path of scrimmage on a third-and-10 play from the Washington 38-yard line. This play seemed to put the Patriots out of field goal range.
“As the calling official, it was my job to rough up the passer because of his whole body weight,” Hill said. “The judge on the field said that the defender hit the player hard, chest-to-chest.”
When he was coming in, he didn’t do a gator roll or a clear on his side to get rid of the majority of that body weight. He hit the man right on the head with that much force, so the category was pure body weight.