Mike Tomlin Bans ‘Somersaulting’ Into the End Zone
Mandatory Credit: Ed Mulholland-USA TODAY Sports
First table games, now somersaults?! Whatever will the Steelers’ offensive players do?!
Tomlin: There will be no more somersault into the end zone celebrations. There is the potential for injury. That simple.
— Bob Labriola (@BobLabriola) October 15, 2013
Joking aside, I cannot say that I am surprised that Pittsburgh’s head coach banned his players from somersaulting into the end zone on touchdowns. After Le’Veon Bell’s dive on his first professional touchdown and Emmanuel Sanders’ front-flip into the end zone last week, Mike Tomlin had apparently had enough of his players performing those aerial acts.
I don’t blame Tomlin at all for the move, especially when one takes into account how a player could get injured after performing such a stunt. Plus, the move itself is a bit “classless” in my opinion.
At least to me, it would be refreshing to see these players “act like they’ve been there before” (the reason why I wasn’t angry at Bell’s dive) at the professional level and cap off their touchdowns with a flip of the ball to the referee (a la Barry Sanders) or a hearty spike (a la Rob Gronkowski).
Plus, when players on a 1-4 team are celebrating some of the most pedestrian (by NFL standards) of accomplishments, it only makes them look like sad and pathetic jagoffs with those types of bush league antics. I’m sure teams and players around the league laugh when they see guys on 1-4 squads pulling those types of stunts.
Who knows? Maybe Tomlin will lay the hammer down and ban some of his players *cough*Antonio Brown*cough* from making fair catches with 15 yards of space and from “pointing” after every first down at some point next week.
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