The NFL's War on Fun
Like a lot of bad decisions, the NFL’s new heightened emphasis on taunting penalties was conceived by a group of bureaucrats hand-picked by a befuddled puppet governor to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.
That’s one way to put it, at least.
The more honest assessment is much simpler: The stodgy old people who make the rules in the NFL don’t like it when players show any type of emotion other than gratitude.
That was made clear this spring when the NFL Competition Committee, made up of 10 people appointed by commissioner Roger Goodell and one selected by the NFL Players Association, voted to target taunting this year as an enhanced point of emphasis in officiating. The committee directed referees to concentrate on calling more taunting penalties this year. Through two weeks of play (three by the time this article appears in print), the results have been disastrous. Flags have flown across the country for crimes ranging from spinning the football on the ground to glancing briefly at another player after making a tackle. There have been an astounding 11 taunting flags thrown this season already. That’s how many taunting penalties were called in 2020 entirely, and it’s the second-most through Weeks One and Two since ESPN began documenting the data in 2000.
This new laser focus on taunting has led to laughably arbitrary standards. One player was penalized for, quite literally, just clapping, while another got away with doing a flip into the end zone to stunt on the defense (as he should have). As if pass interference and roughing the passer calls hadn’t given officials enough power to determine the outcomes of games, the NFL decided to inflate the importance of wholly subjective refereeing decisions that fans hate because a couple of dudes who think Bart Starr was too flashy don’t like when the players show a little emotion.
“We get kind of sick and tired of the taunting that does go on from time to time on the field,” New York Giants owner and Competition Committee member John Mara said in August. “Nobody wants to see a player taunting another player. I know I certainly don't, and I think the rest of the Competition Committee members feel the same way."
If you were wondering who this new point of emphasis is for, Mara took away all pretenses. It’s not for the fans, who seem universally to revile the interminable pauses in the action for petty penalties that do more harm than good. It’s certainly not for the players, whose representation has already decried the move in both statement and essay form. It isn’t for the officials either, who now get the pleasure of being booed even more than usual.
No, this crackdown happened because the people who make the rules want to legislate emotion out of the game, and the players (to say nothing of the fans) don’t have enough say in the matter to stop them.
It’s not as if taunting wasn’t already illegal. A flag must be thrown when a player is “using baiting or taunting acts or words that may engender ill will between teams.” That we are now waiting with bated breath to see if a thumbs-up or a celebratory fist pump somehow falls under that definition is beyond absurd.
“It’s a hard transition,” Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll told the Washington Post. “I think we’ve opened up a bit of a can of worms, so we’re going to have to find our way through it here as we go. It’s a good thought. It’s just hard to manage it.”
It’s hard to manage a fantasy football team with a newborn child. This is damn near impossible. Instead of taking the NFL’s own rule at face value and cracking down only when taunting is obviously out of hand, referees have been forced to focus with needlelike precision on any behavior more expressive than silently running back to the huddle. We can only hope that the results are so unpopular that the blowback forces the suits to change course.
In fact, the new emphasis is so silly that it’s hard not to get a bit conspiratorial. The chairman of the Competition Committee, Rich McKay, is president of the Atlanta Falcons. And the anti-taunting campaign’s most outspoken advocates, coaches such as Ron Rivera of the Washington Football Team and owners such as John Mara of the New York Giants, haven’t exactly been setting the world on fire with their on-field success in recent years. Maybe, just maybe, they think there’s a “taunting” problem because their teams are always on the receiving end of the smack talk.
But I shouldn’t speculate about such things. I wouldn’t want to draw a flag.