Targeting, unnecessary roughness still tough calls for football refs

In here, it seems almost easy.

A quiet conference room on the bottom floor of a nice hotel in Irving. A projector and a white screen. Ten slow-motion hard hits from the 2014 college football season. Make a call, guys. Legal or not?

For 90 minutes, most of the hands that go up are right.

But in the heat of a game, there still might not be a tougher call for officials than recognizing violations of the NCAA’s targeting and the NFL’s unnecessary roughness rules.

On one hand, the rules — which are similarly defined by both entities as a player launching himself into a defenseless player using the top of his helmet — are a way to cut back on concussions.

On the other, they’re a difficult attempt at making a violent game less violent, and doing so by forcing officials to recognize subtle differences in a span of seconds.

“There’s a lot of helmet contact that goes on in a football game, the vast majority of which is perfectly legal,” said Walt Anderson, the Big 12 coordinator of officials who led the 10-play quiz at the conference’s officiating clinic two weekends ago

Since 2013, the NCAA’s targeting rule, which is reviewable by replay, has resulted in a 15-yard penalty and the ejection of a player.

Anderson, who’s also an NFL referee, said the stiffer penalties are starting to change how players tackle and block. Instead of flying in high, their points of contact are getting lower. The challenge for officials, though, is still recognizing the rules in real time.

One play shown at the Big 12’s clinic involved a Baylor receiver popping a defender over the middle. On the field, it was ruled targeting. But a closer look showed the Baylor player’s point of contact was more with the other player’s shoulder, not his head and neck area. It was a difference that likely could’ve only been picked up by replay.

“Everything is in motion and actions don’t just spontaneously occur like a snapshot,” Anderson said. “So what we try to do is get officials used to looking at the game in the motion that it’s in and anticipating when something may or may not occur.”

The NFL’s education of the rule is a constant process.

“We really drill that every week with our game officials, because we want to protect our players from unnecessary risk, but we want to be as accurate as possible,” NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino said Friday at the NFL’s officiating clinic in Irving.

But as with most calls, even the “correct” targeting and unnecessary roughness rulings are met with opposition. What a referee rules as targeting is what a coach might consider a solid hit. Meeting the two sides in the middle, while sticking to the rules, can be a challenge.

“I thought I knew a lot about officiating, but I didn’t,” former Kansas coach Terry Allen told a group of officials at the Big 12 clinic. “But some of you guys — even if you played the sport — know a lot more about officiating than football.”

Steve and Brad Freeman make up one of three father-son officiating duos in the NFL. Steve played defensive back for the Bills in the 1970s and ’80s. Son Brad played college football and in NFL Europe.

Both can appreciate the value of a “good hard lick,” as Brad put it. But in recent years, they’ve had to shift their mindset.

“Some of the things that we look at it is where the shot is being delivered, did the individual launch, is this player in a defenseless position,” Brad said. “When you’re looking at it from an official’s standpoint, if we see a potential foul about to happen, we’re looking for the range where he cannot get hit.”

Steve recalled a play from about a decade ago involving hard-hitting safety John Lynch. Freeman flagged him for unneccesary roughness.

“You of all people, Steve?” Lynch said, well aware of Freeman’s own past as a defender.

This story was originally published July 19, 2015 at 4:39 PM with the headline "Targeting, unnecessary roughness still tough calls for football refs."