It's fashionable in these days of a concussion-conscious NFL to decry the heavy bias toward offense, to gripe that flag-happy refs are ruining the game, that back in the old days you could rip a guy's arm off and beat him with it and there weren't no penalty flags 'cause that was just GOOD HARD FOOTBALL, DADGUM IT. You can safely ignore about 95 percent of these kinds of complaints, primarily because we're living in an era where a quarterback can break out for 50 fantasy points, which makes at least one person in every league happy.
However, every so often we see a play that makes everyone rethink the direction in which the NFL is headed. Midway through the second quarter, the Atlanta Falcons were driving on the Pittsburgh Steelers. Matt Ryan dropped back, looked for an open man, and ...
BOOM. That looked like a classic QB sack, the kind of play you don't often see in the NFL because it's such a total breakdown in protec - wait, what? A flag?
Yes indeed. Refs threw the flag on Pittsburgh linebacker Jason Worilds, dinging him for roughing the passer and giving Atlanta 15 yards and a fresh set of downs. Atlanta picked up a touchdown soon afterward.
A highly unscientific poll on Twitter found fans against the penalty by a rough margin of 100-to-zero. Generally, people who gripe about the good ol' days are the kind of people with whom you should avoid eye contact while backing away slowly, but in this case, those folks might just be correct.
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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter.
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from Yahoo Sports http://ift.tt/1xijWRo
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