A Rough Game - Part 1

Last night's game was another blow-out 45-0, but we finished in under three hours. We threw twenty penalties. Which I still find difficult to believe is less than the average of 24 per game. Even 20 seems like a lot to me. One of the crews this season had 39 fouls. If you have 120 plays a game, how can 1/3 of the plays have fouls? Somethings not right.

Speaking of fouls, I threw three flags - dead ball personal foul against a defenseless player, roughing the snapper during a scrimmage kick, and a chop block.

The personal foul was easy. It was right in front of me and after the whistle.

The roughing the snapper was easy too - he ran right-up the middle of the long snappers head and knocked him on is ass. But, I screwed this up. I did not get the number of the player who roughed the snapper.

This was a bonehead mistake on my part since I'm looking right at the guy. The simple fact was I got caught-up in the play and didn't look at the number. What I should have done is made a mental note of the number before the ball was snapped. I saw him line up directly over the snapper and the idea of him roughing entered my mind. Then, when I saw him make helmet-to-helmet contact, I completely forgot about his number and began considering whether this should be an ejectionable foul. By the time I collected my thoughts, I forgot all about the number.

What made this play even more interesting is there were three unrelated flags, all on 'B', during this down. Since mine was 15 yards and auto first down, 'A' obviously accepted this one.

The chop block - I may have missed one earlier in the game. The one I missed, I think was with the center blocking high and then a non-adjacent linemen (the tackle) came low. This was on a sweep to my right and I keyed on the pulling guard focusing on the point of attack. The tackle went to my left away from the ball. It caught my attention, but not until after the block occurred. I really don't know if it was a chop or not.

But I caught them second time.

Enough for now. I blog more about this game later in the week.