Key penalty in Steelers-Browns called by mistake

The NFL official said on Monday that Browns defensive end Myles Garrett should not have been called for hitting the passer in Sunday's 21-21 second quarter against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Garrett beat quarterback Steelers Ben Roethlisberger for a third foul and was called for a personal foul. In the next match, Steelers running back James Conner made a touchdown and a 7-0 lead over Pittsburgh.

Al Riveron, senior vice president of the NFL for arbitration, told NFL.com that the official had made a mistake in calling Garrett. The defensive end has been marked for a rule violation that prohibits a player from landing on the quarterback with any or all of his weight.

"The rule specifically says" most if not all of your body weight, "Riveron told NFL.com. "So we want that player to make some effort, and over the last three or four weeks we've taken a full video to show the clubs exactly what we're talking about, because the question we're getting all the time is" Eh Well, what do you want our players to do?

"Well, they do not have to put the weight on quarter, and this one showed yesterday, even if there is weight on Ben, that's not what we consider a contact at the level of a fault. "

Riveron noted that four more flags thrown on quarterfinals – Atlanta's Grady Jarrett, Carlos Dunlap of Cincinnati, Sheldon Richardson of Minnesota and David Onyemata of New Orleans – were correctly qualified penalties under the rule of long time. focus on officials this year.

Landing regulations on QB have been in place for more than 20 years. The rule reads as follows: "In attacking a smuggler who is in a helpless posture (for example, during or just after passing a pass), a defender must not throw him unnecessarily or violently and land on him the weight of the defender. "This year, the league replaced the word" and "with" or ", giving referees more latitude to call a penalty.

Until Sunday, 14 smuggler penalties were triggered in 14 games of Week 1. Over the past three seasons, the typical weekend of games included 6.8 calls, by NFL Research. Riveron said that 12 of the 14 calls last weekend were correct.

The other erroneous call involved Marcus Davenport of New Orleans, who was wrongly penalized for a non-touchdown by Ryan Fitzpatrick, according to Riveron.

Riveron had not yet reviewed other items that had not been qualified to see if any other infractions were justified.

Riveron added that he hoped that adjustments would be made by the teams to reduce the increase in security penalties.

"It's a combination of several things: coaching, obviously players, and then arbitration," Riveron told NFL.com. "But I think that at first, because it was not called as we called it or that the committee wants to call it now differently or in some way then it stabilizes and everyone adjusts to it. "

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