The NFL Went And Made Playing Safety Illegal

I’m not one of these “Just make it flag football already” hardos. I think the NFL being proactive against legitimate helmet-to-helmet contact for once is actually good and not bad. But this is the type of tackle that should be celebrated and taught by high school coaches nationwide, not penalized.

Travell Dixon’s eyes were up for the entirety of the play, he initiated contact with his shoulder, wrapped him up with both arms and brought the receiver down. That’s as textbook as textbook gets. The only glimmer of hope here is that it’s preseason for the refs, too. That was game one for this officiating crew and hopefully by the regular season they’ll be able to figure this out. The reason I don’t think they’ll ever fully have it down pat is because the game is so fast that a hard, legal hit still looks and sounds so devastating that some refs are still going to reflexively throw flags. A penalty this severe should be reviewable on the spot. I know they review it in New York to decide if the penalty is severe enough to warrant an ejection, but that’s not good enough in the moment. It’s too large of a momentum swing to not get right immediately and if it tacks five minutes onto a game that already takes 3+ hours, then so be it. But if that’s not going to be the case, and if this is how the rule is going to be called moving forward, I don’t see how anyone can play safety anymore.