Penalties?

It was right in front of his fucking ass. He’s the one who made the call. Just like he made that stupid ruffing the passer call.

BULL FING SHIT

Grits

There were some bad ones in that game.

Who has a list.

Late holding penalty frustrates Rams

By Nick Wagoner | ESPN.com

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/11990/late-holding-penalty-frustrates-rams

EARTH CITY, Mo. — For all the things that happened to cause the St. Louis Rams’ 21-0 lead to dissipate into a 34-31 loss to the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday, they still had a chance to win the game in the closing minutes.

After quarterback Austin Davis found receiver Austin Pettis for a touchdown to cut it to 34-31, the Rams elected to kick off and try to get a stop on defense with all three of their timeouts and the two-minute warning available.

The Rams stuffed Dallas running back DeMarco Murray for no gain on first down to bring up second-and-10 from Dallas’ 20. In need of first downs to ice the game, the Cowboys called for a pass with two and a half minutes left. Quarterback Tony Romo faked a handoff and rolled to his right. From his spot at left defensive end Eugene Sims made contact with Dallas receiver Terrance Williams, who was coming back across the formation.

Sims immediately came off of Williams and got to Romo, dropping him for an apparent sack and a loss of 11 at the Dallas 9. But a flag came out moments later. The call? Defensive holding on Sims. Instead of third-and-21 from the 9, it became first-and-10 from the 25.

Rams coach Jeff Fisher declined to comment on some of the calls that went against the Rams in the loss after the game, saying he needed to see the game tape first, but he couldn’t help himself when asked about the call against Sims again.

“I’m hoping they got the wrong jersey number on the hold there on Eugene,” Fisher said. “I’m really hoping that maybe there was a hold somewhere else on the defense.”

By all accounts, though, the call was indeed against Sims.

A pool reporter sought explanation from referee Clete Blakeman, who offered little substance in explaining the call.

“I have not seen a replay of it, so I can’t really comment on specifics like that,” Blakeman said. “But that’s what was reported to me — that there was a grab and a restriction of an eligible receiver by No. 97.”

Most Rams preferred not to discuss the penalty on the record for fear of fines from the league but without the recorders running, there were plenty of angry responses, most of which wouldn’t be fit to print here anyway.

Further review of the play later shows the Rams have every reason to have a beef with the call. Sims did make contact with Williams but it wasn’t even close to a hold. Williams was coming from inside the formation and could easily have been a blocker in that situation. At absolute worst, it was the equivalent of a jam at the line by a corner rather than a hold.

Mike Pereira, the NFL’s former vice president of officiating, who offers real time analysis of calls around the league, agreed that the call was incorrect.

But for whatever reason, the Rams never seem to get the benefit of the doubt on any calls that are even close. Sims, in particular, seems a magnet for questionable flags. In the past two weeks, he’s been called for four infractions for a total of 50 yards. Earlier Sunday, he earned a flag for roughing the passer when it appeared he hit Romo on the shoulder with his hand.

Dallas eventually punted but from its 32 rather than deep in its own territory and by then the Rams had burned all of their timeouts. They started their final drive at their 14 and came up short when Davis had to force a pass down the sideline in an effort to make up the yards lost by the penalty. That pass was intercepted and Dallas kneeled twice for the win.

It frustrated me as well. I’d like to see the official publicly flogged and then make the scurvy varmint walk the plank or worse.

These calls seem to have been consistently bad in a couple of the games this season – er maybe it was the grog?

At any rate, I wonder if Stan needs to pony up more payoff cash for the referees like I’m sure Jerry Jones would do if asked? Or, maybe the NFL secretly wants the Rams to move back to LA so they’re going to aid said move by “helping” them remain in a state of mediocrity or worse. What’s worse that mediocrity? Certainly not a move to the city of Angels.

OK – hastily concocted conspiracy theories aside -I’m thinking all Ram fans needed a hug yesterday – even the bad ass ones. And, I had to hug myself – that’s not right.

Burwell: Penalties are killing the Rams
• By BRYAN BURWELL

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/columns/bryan-burwell/burwell-penalties-are-killing-the-rams/article_ab26e5cf-1507-5206-a93b-bfc65678aada.html

At the absolute height of their down-and-dirty championship existence, Detroit Pistons players and coaches understood a thing or two about the high cost of doing business when you strut around the basketball globe with “Bad Boys” as your calling card and mayhem as your perceived mode of operation.

Chuck Daly, the ultra-cool Svengali of the Bad Boys, used to constantly harp about “land mines being everywhere.”

It was the veteran coach’s public concession to the real or imagined handicaps that came with trying to corral his eccentric menagerie as they pillaged the NBA countryside.

Strange things would happen during the course of Pistons games. Whistles would tweet, phantom fouls would be called and referees would unapologetically sneer at the Detroit players when they stomped, cussed and complained that they hadn’t laid a glove on the opposing player.

“Yeah, this time,” refs repeatedly barked at them. “Well then that’s for the 100 other calls you know you SOBs got away with.”

As it turns out, there’s a cult among these St. Louis Rams that has embraced the Bad Boy Pistons as kindred competitive spirits.

Mostly it’s the special-teams guys, who have even watched the ESPN documentary on the Detroit hoops dynasty in team meetings and want to play with that same bold, intimidating swagger. But Jeff Fisher-coached teams have long harbored a reputation as edgy, intimidating bad boys, and now it sure does seem as though that rep is beginning to haunt them.

After three games, they are tied for sixth in the NFL in penalties (26) and second in penalty yards (305). Put that together with the first two years under Fisher and the Rams clearly are one of the most penalized teams in the NFL over the past three seasons.

Last year, they ranked third in penalties (123) and fourth in penalty yardage (1,009). In 2012, they were called for a league-high 130 penalties and ranked third in penalty yardage (978).

To put this season’s numbers into perspective, the Rams are on pace for a staggering 138 penalties and 1,627 penalty yards.

Every week, they keep getting called for penalties. Some of them clearly are of their own doing. But some of them are products of some strange hocus pocus.

To put it into Bad Boy vernacular, these are the “land mines” that the Rams keep stepping on. These are the unfortunate residue of three consecutive years of being considered one of the most penalized teams in pro football. These are the very real handicaps that the Rams are coping with, and not so well, I might add.

If they want to be like the Bad Boy Pistons, they better dig deeper into the legend. Detroit loved a good conspiracy, and truly believed the refs were out to get them. Heck, they believed the whole world was out to get them. But as paranoid as they might have been, part of their championship mystique was they knew every night they walked onto the floor they had to overcome their own dark reputations.

And how did they do that?

By being so darned good that it didn’t matter if the world was out to get them.

The Bad Boy Pistons rarely beat themselves.

The Bad Boy Rams do with a disturbing frequency.

On Monday afternoon at Rams Park, Fisher flexed his muscles as one of the league’s most influential coaches by skillfully criticizing the way officials are calling penalties on his team.

In truth, he had several legitimate beefs after reviewing game footage of his team’s 34-31 loss Sunday to the Dallas Cowboys.

“Believe me, I looked at them,” said Fisher. “I’m disappointed. We had several of them that are not fouls, probably four in particular.”

By now, we can all recite the blown calls by the officials without a script. The two most obvious ones involved defensive end Eugene Sims, who was called for roughing the passer (supposedly on an imaginary blow to Tony Romo’s helmet) and a defensive hold on a fourth-quarter sack that didn’t happen, either.

When asked if he could explain the disparity in the calls on Sunday (the Rams were whistled for a staggering 104 more penalty yards than Dallas), Fisher figuratively threw up his hands.

“I don’t know,” he said. “(But) in my opinion, there were a dozen or so, maybe more, offensive holds that weren’t called by the Cowboys. The penalties didn’t create our turnovers. The penalties didn’t cause the interception return for a touchdown. We weren’t penalized when we fumbled the snap at midfield. We can control the things that we can control and we didn’t do it well enough to win this game.”

The Bad Boy Pistons were so darned good at the mischief and mayhem they created, they rarely were caught at the scene of the crime holding the smoking gun. Mostly, when they did get busted by the refs it was for the equivalent of tax evasion.

But there was so much substance that went along with that intimidating Bad Boy style. They were the smartest team in the room. They were gifted and disciplined and full of future Hall of Fame talent and they out-executed everyone they faced, including Michael Jordan’s Bulls, Larry Bird’s Celtics and Magic Johnson’s Lakers.

And when they did lose, they didn’t beat themselves.

The Rams seem to always find ways to beat themselves.

So while it’s perfectly justified for these young Rams to harbor a little healthy dose of referee paranoia, they’d be far better served to eliminate the maddening self-destructive miscues that seem to haunt them on every given Sunday.

Rarely is there such a wide disparity in penalty yards between two teams in one game. In fact, there’s never been as big a disparity in either direction since the Rams moved to St. Louis in 1995.

Well, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t watching the blocking closely in this game, so I just assumed that the Cowboys’ offensive line is one of the best in the game.

You would think that the Rams would have said something to the referees during the game. Usually, when there’s that much holding, you eventually see the calls being made. Maybe it’s as easy as the refs had money on the game. You know?

Ten Takeaways from Sunday’s 34-31 Loss to Dallas
By Randy Karraker

The Rams’ 50 penalties through three games are fifth in the NFL, and their 305 penalty yards are second. It’s really hard to win consistently when you give the opposition 100 yards per game. Sunday’s damage: eight infractions for 119 yards. And you can blame the officials, but as Brad Thompson says in “The Fast Lane,” “don’t like it? Play better.”

Um…yeah. This is why I had to take a break. FUCK this. That Defensive Holding call on Eugene Sims was some of the worst bullshit I’ve EVER seen. EVER. It’s the kind of horrible call that feeds conspiracy theories because it defies logic, fact, visual evidence and reason.

Several of those calls FOR the Cowboys came at critical junctures and as we all know, it only takes a few.

I realize Quinn has no sacks, but why is no one talking about how he’s not just held on every play, but so obviously and grossly held? It’s like Patriot SB36 level disregarding the rules…

It’s bullshit.

If the NFL wants to do this or condones this, then fine. But don’t call it a contest.

You play to win the game. But it’s not a game if the outcome is decided before hand. And that’s exactly how it feels right now… that the Rams are going to lose big this season to prepare for a move to LA…, but be stocked with talent to make a big splash in 2015 where they will get much better BOD from the league… all of a sudden!…

This all just stinks to me.

Play the games on merit.

Move the damn team if you want to make more f’n money.

All this subterfuge is why Goodell’s in this mess right now. All of what I wrote above sounds crazy… except it’s exactly the MO of the NFL league office for YEARS… SpyGate, Bountygate… how cities got franchises… How the Giants got the first game in MetLife stadium… why Goodell’s in this Ray Rice mess now… why the CTE scandal is the massive scandal that it is…

None of this changes that the Rams need to improve things. They most certainly DO.

However, if we remove the blatant tampering just from the refs in the Cowboys game, the Rams are 2-1 with momentum heading into the bye week, and 2nd in the division, tied with Seattle and ahead of SF who’s in the basement.

Seriously, looking forward, I expect we either look bad in the next 8 games OR the refs will step in and cost us games such that we do no better than 2-6 over the next 8 games.

THAT’S MY CALL. It just won’t be allowed. Watch. The reason we lose MORE than one game over the next 8 will be blatant refereeing interference…

Mackeyser wrote:

The level of disparity is so blatant that it defies logical explanation.

Look at the pictures. The refs can’t say they didn’t see it when they are clearly watching the QB for “points of emphasis” like Personal Fouls and Unnecessary Roughness and Roughing The Passer.

It’s either GROSS negligence or WILLFUL negligence.

Either way, the NFL is in a sorry state.

And it’s not just the Rams.

Anyone see the Pats/Raider game? The Raiders should have taken that game to overtime, but the Raiders were given the game when on the final Raiders TD endzone drive, an OL got called for a holding that’s the farthest thing from holding. It was a textbook pancake block.

Here’s the problem. This isn’t like the replacement refs where they made mistakes and looked lost. These calls are specifically influencing the outcomes of games and it’s not even subtle anymore. This is overt. It’s like the league is panicking. “Oh God! We can’t let the Cowboys go 1-2 Not to the Rams! They’re down 21-0! Shit! Step in. You know what to do…”

And as stupid, lame and as far-fetched as that sounds, it explains things FAR better than any of the idiotic stammering, hemming and hawing and flop sweating the Refs have done in games where these calls have happened.

I half expect some NFL lackey to break loose with a memo at this point…

There is hubris in the NFL and where there is hubris, there is soon to be a fall from great heights…

Well, the Refs missed a call against the Rams that would have overturned the first Dallas turnover.

I thought the call against Simms for roughing was wrong, but i could see how a Ref might miss
that one, since it was close, and in real time that one might be hard to see.

I dunno Mack, I thought the key to the game was
the Wells bonehead-play,
the McCleod? bonehead play on Dez,
the 4th and inches Failure
and AustinD’s panicky-INT, and
JJ’s Pass-Interference on Dez.

Lots of great plays by the Rams,
but lots of bonehead ones, too.

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