TAMPA, Fla. — There is flag football and then there are the penalty flags that some believe are turning the NFL into that softer version of the game.
A roughing the passer penalty after Falcons defensive tackle Grady Jarrett’s third-down sack of Bucs quarterback Tom Brady, in Sunday’s 21-15 win over the Atlanta, continues to dominate among topics around the NFL.
Referee Jerome Boger dropped the flag with just under three minutes remaining in the game, forcing the Falcons to use their final timeouts and essentially preventing any comeback attempt.
A day later, Bucs head coach Todd Bowles, who still calls the defense, was asked if the rules protecting the quarterback may turn every game into a version of the Pro Bowl, which was canceled because players didn’t want to tackle.
“Hopefully I won’t be in the league that long when they do come up with that decision, if they come up with that decision,” Bowles said Monday.
While acknowledging the difficulty defensive players have with a narrow strike zone and other restrictions on tackling the quarterback, Bowles said he doesn’t worry about his team drawing unnecessary roughness penalties.
“You try to play it the right way,” he said. “You try to do all the things the right way and some things can’t be helped. A lot of things can be helped. You don’t worry about it as much as long as you’re teaching it the right way and making sure they’re playing it the right way.”
Like most teams, the Bucs study the officiating crews they will have each week and make players aware of their tendencies in terms or which penalties are emphasized.
“We always try to be cognizant of what the officials are calling going into every week,” Bowles said. “... We remind them what we talked about during the week. We understand what they’re looking for. ... Not just the quarterback but every call.”
But while teaching defensive players the rules of engagement with quarterbacks and other positions, Bowles said they try not to take away the natural aggressiveness of the game.
“We let them play and we go from there but we’ve got to make them aware of it,” he said.
What happened Sunday had a huge impact on the game. The Bucs had built a 21-0 lead, then allowed 15 unanswered points in the second half.
Facing third and 5 at the Atlanta 47-yard line with 3:03 remaining, Brady dropped back to pass and was corralled by Jarrett, who spun the Bucs quarterback down.
Boger said Jarrett “unnecessarily” threw Brady to the ground.
“What I had was the defender grabbed the quarterback while he was still in the pocket and unnecessarily throwing him to the ground,” Boger said in a postgame pool report. “That is what I was making my decision based on.”
