Belated Super Bowl Question

B

bedhead

100+ Posts
Please explain to me how New England could challenge the "12 men on the field" when no call had been made by the officials. I re-watched and saw no flags. Does this mean any time a coach sees a hold or facemask they can just throw a challenge flag?? Am I missing some obscure rule or something? I could of sworn that a penalty had to be called for something to be challenged, but maybe rules are different for THE BEST TEAM EVER TO PLAY THE GAME. ever.
 
You can only challenge something that's objective. Either there are 11 men on the field, or there are not. You can't challenge to get a hold or pass interference, that's subjective.
 
Also reviewable are things like the number of men on the line of scrimmage, and if the quarterback passed the ball forward past the line of scrimmage.

You'd think the Worldwide Leader et al. would do a better job of explaining this to fans when it happens, because there is a lot of confusion on this issue.

I don't know whether you can review a play where the flag was thrown incorrectly, but you can review some plays and suggest a flag should have been thrown.
 
12 men on the field is specifically in the list of reviewable plays in the NFL. You can review it to wave off the penalty, or call it. The only other penalties this applies to is illegal forward pass, and illegal touching. NCAA adds illegal interference by a non-player (aka Chris Jesse).

Offside and illegal formation are also objective calls, but they're not reviewable in any way.
 
I admit that caught me off guard. Good points on the objective side of it. I guess next they can question dress code violations?!!

Leading up to.... the one thing I don't understand about sports in general at this level is why so much fuss about little details and rules and so forth? I mean, in baseball for instance, there is absolute bizzare fussing over whether a man put a little tar on a bat or spit on a ball. Grown men doing this. Men with hair on their chest and a pair of metallic spheres in their jocks. Fussing and kicking dirt over whether Johnny or Marcus touched a bag this way or that or did some silly little thing. Even NASCAR fusses over little details... oh, gosh, Kendall's spoiler plate is 1 cm too low. My, my.

No disrespect to choice of lifestyle, but haven't men's professional sports turned into just a bunch of gay cat fighting?!! I'd give anything to see Will Ferrell and an ensemble cast of the craziest comedians do a complete spoof on the prissy fussing of sports. Directed by Judd Apatow (40 yr old virgin). So Will Ferrell, and a cast among others of Ben Stiller, Steve Carell, Vince Vaughn and Eddie Murphy, and as many present and prior Sat Nite Live cast as you can handle.

Just go over the top and trash the whole nine yards. Have the key players and coaches also play golf and show them in a "friendly" game going nuts over who touched who's balls...

tongue.gif
 
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