themanwithnoname said: I'm glad that that godawful illegal contact call didn't decide the game. I'm getting a bit tired of the NFL and these rules where you can't touch anybody anymore on defense. |
The call was explained very well by the announcers too...kinda odd that they would get one right =P
But they were exactly right in pointing out that it should have been illegal formation on the offense for not having 7 men on the line. As a result the LJ (line judge) thought Hester was on the line of scrimmage and thus assumed the line was a yard further back than it actually was. So the Al Harris bump on Hester just before 5 yards looked like a bump just after 5 yards (which would have been illegal contact). In short they missed a penalty on the offense and called one on the defense because of their failure to recognize it.
It was an absolutely terrible call on his (the LJ) part, and while it wasn't the game it could have been with how low scoring it was up until the end.
@speaking generally about the NFC North,
On the MNF game I thought Cutler obviously looked terrible but I honestly wasn't overly impressed with Rodgers as well...I mean 17 for 28, 184 yds, and 1 TD is not horrible and you can win football games doing that but its not what the Packers need from him to be a deep playoff threat this year. I have no doubt they will improve on it, particularly some of the dropped balls I saw that weren't his fault, but neither team is where they wanted to be with their QB on week 1.
Before Packers fans try to defend the notion that Rodgers has to do more than he did let me just point out that you guys just scraped by a Bears team that gave up 4 interceptions....only 1 of which was actually attributable to good defensive play (John Jolly's 1 handed goal-line grab). The other 3 were either partly (1 of them) or entirely (the othe 2) Cutler reading the defense wrong, missfiring on the route, or just plain making a bad throw.
Just to drive this home, old man Favre had a better QB rating than either of them and he needs to do far less for the Vikings than Rodgers or Cutler need to do for the Packers and Bears respectively. Having said that, Favre could stand to improve over his measily 110 yards as well. Needless to say the "experts" who proclaimed the NFC North a QB division need to rethink their headline...our QB's are pretty mediocre thus far, with only one of them living up to the early season standards he needs to for his team to be successful later on (and even then only because they were so low to begin with).
Between all 4 starting QB's in the NFC North we could combine Favre and Rodgers to have stats of one decent QB at ~300 yards and 2 TDs, and we could combine Stafford and Cutler to have one giant Offensive Coordinator's nightmare at 477 yards 1TD and 7 INTs. Actually adding Stafford and Cutler's QB rating together (for week 1) and doubling it would still leave them in 3rd for QB rating within the division.
Nope, we're still the black and blue division, and I'm perfectly fine with that.