As if we needed more evidence of how confident top-tier quarterbacks are in their ability to work the system, Patrick Mahomes followed up an absolute joke of a drawn personal foul penalty in Saturday’s 23–14 divisional round win over the Houston Texans—he wandered around the Kansas City Chiefs’ backfield like a lost old man on the beach wielding a metal detector before collapsing to the ground late, causing two defenders who were unable to redirect themselves to fall over him at the last second—with a second attempt to bait Texans defenders into a flag-worthy hit eight plays later.
While the moment was egregious in and of itself (you can watch it here, or simply search Mahomes flop on your social media platform of choice), the fact that it occurred on the same drive as a play in which the Chiefs’ position was immensely improved by a purposely late quarterback slide says all it needs to say about the quarterback’s willingness to utilize ridiculous rules and even more suspect enforcement to his advantage. This isn’t to single out Mahomes specifically—though he has been one of the more regular offenders, he has gotten caught doing this and knocked into a Gatorade cooler once or twice this year without drawing a flag—but an effort to point out yet again the absurdity of how a one-score playoff game can feel like an insurmountable deficit when playing against a passer experienced in becoming a Fabergé egg when it’s convenient for him.
This isn’t just conspiratorial trash can banging by the way. The Associated Press noted that, since the 2022 postseason began, the Chiefs have gotten five roughing the passer calls in critical loser-goes-home games. Their opponents have not gotten one. This is enabling at its finest.
In a sane and soberly officiated NFL, with a modern rulebook that actually reflects the game as it is played, the late quarterback slide would be outlawed for its obvious injury risk to quarterbacks and the situation it puts defenders in. Defensive players already bear an incredible burden, nevermind the whole bending space and time thing that referees would like them to become better at.
While we’re snowballing, roughing the passer should be a reviewable offense and faking going out of bounds, or simply lingering at the sideline in hopes that a defender will hit you and spark a penalty, should be a personal foul with consideration for expulsion. We penalize flopping in futbol for God’s sake, the world’s most crooked and suspectly officiated sport in the world (outside of boxing, maybe). Let’s get with the times.
Think about what would have happened if a Texans defender had leveled Mahomes as he teetered on the sideline amid the attempted flop. The hit would have triggered a massive brawl between players and possibly encompass coaches or staff who weren’t wearing helmets. This is already one of the most charged environments in all of sports. We’re a little more than a year removed from an embarrassing sideline brawl between the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles during an intense regular-season game.
While we should credit players for figuring out how to exploit those loopholes, we must also make a concerted effort to close them. During the rise of the New England Patriots’ dynasty, which drew the ire of every competing team and multiple investigations into—checks notes—the air density of a football, there were legitimate uproars over the silliness of the legality of their no huddle offense. Maybe it’s time to start red-lining the Chiefs in the name of fairness and competitive balance.
At the very least, it’s time to bolster the mechanism and normalize the frequency with which the officials can pick up horrible roughing the passer calls, or arm coaches with the ability to combat it via challenge. This has been a particularly disastrous season for roughing the passer calls, coming to the point where Aaron Rodgers at a postgame press conference said a call he benefitted from was blatantly incorrect. There were more than 1,300 yards in this NFL season that were given out via roughing the passer calls.
I very much understand that the NFL’s response to this, or to the legion of sports betters who are beating their heads against a wall (Houston +8.5, yikes) or to the content creators on the still-burgeoning NFL-is-rigged content subgenre would be to drown us all in wet cash. And, really, there will always be something else to complain about.
However, at a quick glance, there are at least 24 teams in the NFL right now with a quarterback we’d consider “mobile” (and, let’s be real, Mac Jones tried the sideline flop thing in Jacksonville this year, too). This is a massive difference from the landscape at the time many of these rules were written. While quarterbacks could always escape to the sideline in a frantic sprint to evade defenders, now they are the best athletes on the field, physically suited to dip, dive, flop, stutter step and create all manner of confusion for defenders. This has been a wonderful development to the NFL but not when those gifts can be manipulated around legislation that was already created to give them an advantage and hold them up above the rest of their fellow players with the preciousness of a newborn.
I’m not saying that the game turned on the Mahomes roughing the passer penalty, but I am noting that the game was never the same after the Chiefs got pushed into Texans territory after the call (and Mahomes, right on cue, threw some kind of visually stunning touchdown pass). Reviewing it could have very well altered the tenor of that drive. At the time it was a one-point game.
After the game was over, Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said his team knew coming into the game that it was them against everybody. Watch the replay of this and note how tightly Ryans has to hold on to prevent himself from skewering a zebra to enjoy alongside that strange toxic-spill-colored Gatorade next to him at the podium.
Of course, Mahomes trying to generate one more flag via a blatant flop (again, in the spirit of fairness something he is not alone in doing) says all it needs to say. He expects these built-in bonus yards and there isn’t a damn thing his opponents can do about it. Nothing, at least, until the NFL recognizes it as a serious issue.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as The NFL Must Change How It Penalizes Hitting the Quarterback.