Quote:
Originally posted by carolinaRRREF
no. That's still only 0.38 OPIs per game. And most of those were blatant. <20 of those were of the hand-check variety.
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And you know this......how, exactly?
Did you see all 98 of them?
First you said there were only <20 of them, which you couldn't possibly have known to begin with.
Now, when confronted with the evidence that there were nearly
five times that many called, you say that most of them were blatant, and and that <20 were of the hand-check variety, which you couldn't possibly know, either.
.38 OPIs per game. Well, then, I guess it's HORRIBLE when there's even ONE in a game! That's three times the average!
You know, there were more than 32,000 plays run in the NFL last year, and, surprisingly enough, a flag isn't thrown on
every one. I don't know what number you'd be looking for that would tell you it's okay to call offensive pass interference - if there were 300 of them called, would that appease you? Quarterbacks and receivers are fairly proficient at what they do, I wouldn't expect there to be an OPI very frequently.
There are only about 7 penalties per team per game in the NFL, on average. That's with holding (the most common offensive penalty), false starts, illegal motions on offense and pass interference (the most common defensive penalty), illegal contact, blocks on special teams, everything else.
To just say "Well, there's only .38 OPIs called per game in the NFL, so therefore, it's never called and shouldn't be called in the Super Bowl" is just ludicrous. Players are almost
never ejected from an NFL game, yet Sean Taylor was ejected from a playoff game! Are you going to say "Well, he shouldn't have ejected him, because there's only .0004 ejections per game in the NFL?" No. Why? Because
he deserved it.
In the play in question (way too much in question, seemingly among people who can't deal emotionally with someone losing a football game and have to look for supernatural explanations), the receiver pushed off the defender, the defender went backwards, there was separation and the ball came in a second later. That's OPI, every day of the week. Anyone who wouldn't call
that play when it's right in front of them,
especially on the game's biggest stage, would be making a mistake.
I think that's the general consensus. It's not unanimous, obviously. But I think the folks who are on the side of the call being fair and correct have elucidated their case a hell of a lot better than you have.