T.J. Watt recently let his frustrations boil over during the press conference that followed the Pittsburgh Steelers’ loss to the Arizona Cardinals. He said “the NFL has something going against me” in regard to the lack of holding calls he was receiving. This has sparked discussion surrounding the NFL’s lack of calling blatant holds and letting offensive linemen get away with too much.
Former NFL referee and current CBS Sports rules analyst Gene Steratore went on the DVE Morning Show with Randy Baumann on Tuesday and discussed Watt’s frustrations.
“There’s no whispering going on here like, ‘Let’s look the other way or things of that nature.’ But timing is everything, right?” Steratore said. “I mean, if you end up with a couple plays that end up big-gain type of plays, you take a look, running back bounces outside, you see this restriction on T.J.or Myles [Garrett] or somebody of that nature right at that point of attack, and it’s not called. You open yourself up for these types of comments. The conspiracy stuff, it’ll never stop.”
There has been a trend with NFL rules over the last two or three decades that have continually made things easier on offenses. Defenders can’t hit the quarterback or receivers over the middle the way they used to be able to and things like pass interference have become stricter. This upcoming offseason, it is likely the NFL will ban the hip-drop tackle, which will make things even more difficult on defenders. All that being said, Steratore is saying there is no grand conspiracy to allow offensive holding to happen.
“I do think it’s an overreaction on their part,” Steratore continued. “Officials that are held to account on those types of plays just need to get better on plays where they’re seeing that. There’s a lot of times on the edge, defensive players they’ll rip move. They’ll put themselves underneath of an offensive player’s arm very quickly, and it looks like holding right away. But the defender put himself in that position. It changes the way holding would be called then from that next three or four steps.”
There are a lot of legitimate holds that do not get called, but the casual viewer will often identify those rip-move situations as holds. To Steratore’s point, the defenders put themselves in that position and holding will not be called under those circumstances. Just like with any element of human officiating, sometimes the call will be made correctly, sometimes the call will be made incorrectly, or sometimes the call will be missed altogether. Though if you ask another top pass rusher in the league, Micah Parsons, it is pretty clear to see what is going on.
