Conspiracy Theory: Are Roethisberger and Vick treated unfairly by the refs?
By Kim Myers
During ESPN’s Monday Night Football Countdown show, Tom Jackson read directly from the rule book regarding hits to the quarterback. To summarize the exerpt, he stated that it is a penalty to hit the passer with any part of your helmet to any part of his body. The rule does not state whether or not the passer has to be in the pocket or not. He then very passionately showed a video clip of a hit on Vick that completely demonstrated the rule being broken with no flag, along with several identical hits to other quarterbacks such as Kyle Orton and Ryan Fitzpatrick that were flagged. I liked your emotion there, Tom, you’re my boy Blue. Then Cris Carter posed a very interesting question that I hope Steeler Nation took note of. He asked if that was James Harrison that put the helmet to Vick’s chest, driving him to the ground, does that draw a flag? At least Vick doesn’t have to sit there and watch his defensive players get flagged and fined left and right for hits that he doesn’t even get the benefit of the flag when they happen to him all in the name of being a “mobile quarterback”.
Mike Golic on the Mike & Mike show said that Brady might draw flags where other players do not similar to Jordan, Lebron or Kobe drawing a flag in the NBA where a lesser “super star” would not. I’m going to have to call BS on that one, Mike. First off, comparing basketball fouls to NFL hits is like comparing apples and giraffes. You’re talking about comparing a slap on a shooting hand to being driven to the ground by a 300 pound DE or LB. Trent Dilfer on ESPN Monday Night Countdown, pretending to know something about the quarterback position in the NFL, stated that Vick is not being treated unfairly because he does get a lot of flags thrown his way. Um, Trent, if there is video evidence that there have been hits that have gone unflagged it doesn’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference how many flags he already had thrown his way. A flaggable hit on one quarterback should be a flaggable hit on every quarterback, every time it happens.
There’s no doubt that the protection of quarterbacks Goodell is attempting to institute is in no way being implemented constitently. For a conspiracy theory to hold any kind of argument there has to be a little teensy bit of truth to it. I’m just entertaining myself mostly here and there’s no reason to take any part of this article too seriously but it’s pretty interesting that the only 2 starting quarterbacks that have served suspensions under Goodell’s personal conduct policy are the 2 most known for getting hit without flags. Could it be a conspiracy?